


Hollstein One Shots

by TaraTyler



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2018-04-28 23:40:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 88
Words: 54,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5109716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraTyler/pseuds/TaraTyler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>drabbles and mini fics about my beloved vampire and cupcake</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Laundry

“Hey babe, can you throw a load of clothes in for me please?” Carmilla yells over her shoulder as she tries to get the house cleaned up a little bit before Laura’s dad arrived. She seriously loves and detests how incredibly domesticated that makes her sound. No one from her past would have ever believed that the once great and might Carmilla/Mircalla/Armcilla Karnstein would have settled down quite so easily, if they had believed it at all. Some would have laughed. others might have just passed the hell out at the idea.  
Laura probably had some inkling of an idea of what Carmilla’s life had used to look like from seeing her interactions with Mattie, but there was no way that she understood the depths to which major party girl Carmilla had been sunk. At some point she had probably danced with all of the greats.  
Still, the vampiress decidedly preferred this much more simple life of peace and quiet with Laura. She did sometimes go a little bit stir crazy, but she used that opportunity to sweep Luara off of her feet and to take her somewhere amazing and romantic, or just to somewhere that had meant something to Carmilla. Laura loved the spontaneity of it and the romance that came along with having been swept off of her feet, sometimes quite literally.  
“Carmilla! Help!” Laura screams and the vampiress immediately drops everything and runs the other laundry room as quickly as possible.  
“Laura, how in the hell did you do that?” carmilla asks in a deadpan ‘wtf’ voice.  
“How do I do anything?” her voice echoes out of the washing machine that her feet are sticking up out of. Her head is in the bottom and her entire body is wedged in. Carmilla definitely couldn’t complain about their life together being boring.


	2. Forced Marriage

“No, darling. If you insist in this manner to continue your illicit relationship with my daughter, I must make a demand for your nuptials.” the Dean speaks out of Perry’s body. “Or the girl dies.”  
“This is so freaky.” Laura groans, an engagement ring soldering itself onto her finger.  
“No kidding. If I thought that it would help, I would break the stringy redhead’s neck.” Carmilla growls.  
“It wouldn’t help, Carm, so I guess that we’re engaged, now.” Laura chuckles darkly.  
“I’m sorry.” the vampire apologizes.  
“You have nothing to be sorry for. This is all on the Dean.” Laura kisses her cheek and leans her forehead against Carmilla’s, running her hands through her dark hair.  
“I still feel like I should have done better, or done something more. I wouldn’t be able to take it if anything happened to you, Laura.” Carmilla kissed her forehead back.  
“I can think of some fates worse than getting married to you.” Laura says with an almost smile.  
“I can think of a lot of worse things than that, believe you me.” Carmilla grins.  
“I feel like you’re about to burst into that song from Aladdin.” Laura laughs. “I can show you the world. Shining, shimmering splendor…”  
“I’m not going to be singing any Disney there, Creampuff.” Carmilla scoffs.  
“Don’t tell me that you don’t like Disney, or I am so going to have to call this whole wedding thing off.” Laura gives her a warning look.   
“I won’t tell you that, then.”


	3. Catmilla

Carmilla was pretty sure that Laura was half of the way to asleep already. Her eyes were nearly closed and she was resting her head on one fist. Carmilla couldn’t help but to find it adorable. She stretched out and shrank down to all fours, sprouting black fur all over her body. She clinked her claws out on the tiles, enjoyed the stretch of her muscles, and shuddered before stalking over to Laura.  
“Giant black cat…” Laura says with a sigh.  
Carmilla purrs and jumps up onto the couch, butting the little human underneath her chin.  
“Good girl.” Laura sighs with a half smile, scratching the vampire cat behind her ears, eliciting a heavy rumble that felt like a storm echoing through their dorm room. She really liked the feeling of the vibrations rolling through her chest from inside of Carmilla. More than anything, it was comforting and Laura cuddled the large beastie. She buried her face into the thick fur.  
Carmilla licked the side of her face and settled in, letting the Creampuff wrap around her to go to sleep. It was comforting and Carmilla could sleep just about anywhere and anyway comfortable in her panther form. Being with Laura, her heartbeat against her fur, a reminder that her love was safe.


	4. Shopping for a New Apartment

“Laura, get off of that couch.” Carmilla scolds her, rolling her eyes so hard that Laura suspected that they might one day actually get stuck that way.  
“If we are going to be buying a new sofa, then it has to be one that has the perfect amount of bounce to it.” Laura says as though it were a big deal.  
“Cupcake, we’ve bought an apartment, not an entire playground.” Carmilla groans.  
“I know, I just want everything to be perfect.” Laura hops down and puts her shoes and socks back on.  
“I’m going to go and look at mattresses while you look at more couches. You do your best not to fall off of anything and die, okay?” Carmilla looks exhausted and mildly amused.  
“No, I want to come with you.” Laura falls all over herself to follow Carmilla before she even has her shoes all of the way on.  
“Why?”  
“I love you, what other reasons do I need?”


	5. A Night In

“I don’t want to go to bed, yet.” Laura complains.  
“Why do you always have to act like a ten year old, Cupcake? You’re twenty-seven.” Carmilla complains.  
“Because I’m cure and you love it that I do that, babe. I wouldn’t deny you your fun.” Laura teases, sticking her tongue out at her vampire wife.  
“Well, maybe I want to go to bed. Maybe I want. to wrap my arms around my itty-bitty, teeny-tiny, adorable wife and sleep for the next decade.” Carmilla groans.  
“Maybe I want to play a game or watch a show with my super hot vampire wife and have some cuddles.” Laura pouts, her lower lip sticking out nearly an inch.  
Carmilla snorts and tosses Laura over her shoulder and runs up the stairs to the sound of her protests yelling from behind her. For the big finish, she tosses the younger woman onto her bed.  
“Compromise. You watch TV and I snooze, then you be asleep by ten so you aren’t a complete pain in the morning. You know how you get when you haven’t slept.” Carmilla gives her a knowing look and Laura grunts aware that she got into moods from lack of sleep.  
“Fine, but only so I don’t bite your head off or hurt your tender, centuries old vampire feelings.”  
“Thanks, babe.” Carmilla kisses her softly and promptly falls asleep on her chest.


	6. Guitarist Quit

“Elsie, come onnnn, it’s my song, I wrote it. Can’t you just sing it the way that I asked you to? It’s not a big deal.” Laura protests.  
“If it’s not a big deal, why can’t I do it the way I want to?” Elsie replies, swinging her guitar around so that it hung off of her back instead of across her body.  
“Because I wrote it to suit our vices in a certain way. You know that I take all of these little particulars into account. Tomorrow is possibly the biggest show of our lives, just please do as I ask.” Laura asks desperately.  
“No, I’m tired of having to do everything the Laura Hollis way, why can’t we ever just decide as a group?” she pouts, and Laura is kind of getting nervous about the direction the lead guitarist of the band could be heading.  
“We did decide as a group, Else. We decided to do things the Laura way.” LaFontaine steps out from behind the drumset to back their friends up.  
“You were there. You should be able to remember that right?” Danny backs to behind Laura as well, setting her bass on its stand and crossing her arms across her chest as well, the most imposing of the four, now joined by a quiet but defiant looking Lola Perry.  
“Fine then, I’m out of here.” Elsie proclaims, roughly shoving her guitar into its case, and leaving.  
“Oh my goodness, what are we going to do… “Laura sinks to the floor, hugging her own Fender close. She knows that she can’t play at all like Elsie, much less play both parts on her own. “There went our big break!”  
“It’ll all be okay, Frosh. Who needs her anyway?” LaF tries to reassure her.  
“We did. We needed her. I’ve poured my soul into this, and now it’ all ruined. I’m so sorry, guys. I should have just let her do what she wanted. I’m so sorry.” Laura apologizes as her friends sank to the floor around her.  
“We’ll find someone else. It can’t be that hard.” Danny offers, really not wanting to have to see Laura cry. She hated it when Laura cried and she couldn’t just fix everything for her.  
“Elsie was a terrible person, but she was good, like really good. It’s going to be hard to find somebody else like that.” Perry groans, patting Laura’s hair in her motherly way.  
“Actually, I might know somebody. She plays a different style than we do, but she wipes Elsie off the board in both guitar and voice. I can talk to her. Plus, she’s smoking hot. Absolutely gorgeous. Stunning. There are no words for… ow!” Perry smack LaFontaine on the back of the head ot make them shut up.  
“I’m sorry, honey. My hand must have slipped.” she apologizes in a sickly sweet voice.  
“Right. I’ll get a hold of her and see what I can do.” they say with a sheepish grin.  
“I’ll see if she can meet us for an emergency practice tomorrow morning, play her our songs and print off some sheet music.” LaF thinks to themself.  
Right then, Laura didn’t think that she could ever be more thankful for her amazing friends. With them around her she felt completely untouchable.  
She sy up that night, writing like she usually did and trying to calm her racing heartbeat. Laura didn’t actually want to get famous and she couldn’t care less about how many people would one day know her name. She wasn’t even that big of a fan of being in the spotlight, however the others had all of these dreams for their futures and Laura had all of this talent and she knew that not using it would be a waste. Playing and singing in front of people was a world of fun and she loved it, she wasn’t at all shy, and being on stage performing was her greatest love thus far. Danny said that she was the world’s greatest contradiction. Laura had then gone on to write a song about that and they had laughed about it.  
The next morning Laura woke up already anxious about the day’s performance. She couldn’t believe that they were inviting a total stranger into their little family. Laura couldn’t find it within herself to be at all alright with that. She paced all over her small home, getting everything ready for her friends and their guest, changing everything around, then getting it ready again.  
Danny arrived first, as per usual, to help get everything ready, only to find it all already done. Immediately she understood that it was because Laura was a panicky mess.  
“Honey, everything is going to be just fine. Sit down and take some deep breathes. I’ll make you some hot cocoa.” Danny reassures her, in a way that is completely different from the normal and territorial, and overprotective Danny Lawrence that Laura had gotten used to.   
She preferred this caring and sensitive side of Danny. The bassist had often proved that she was willing to take on anyone and everyone that would come up against her friends or her family. Both parts of her are good.Perry came in next, then LaFontaine with a dark haired and pale girl that Laura didn’t recognize.  
“Band, meet Carmilla Karnstein. Carmilla Karnstein, meet the other three fifths of Naked Human.” LaF gestures to where Laura say, flanked by Danny and Perry, as though they were there to protect her.  
“This is Danny Lawrence, our bass player. She can’t sing a lick, but she plays like fourteen instruments.” LaF begins introductions. “Laura Hollis, our revered leader, lead singer, guitar novice, team mascot, leading lady, decision maker, and song-writer extraordinaire. Next is Lola Perry, my lovely fiancee and our favorite pianist. Don’t let her near the Windex, she’ll clean everything within reach. You know me as well, drummer, but not dumber. I’m also in control of our finances once we actually have some.”  
“Cool.” was all that the intruder had to say.”  
“Did you have the chance to look at any of our music?” Perry asks to dismiss the awkward silence.  
“Yeah, it’s good.” Carmilla replies succinctly as she sets down her guitar case. Laura had never seen a guitar that fit her owner so well. It was one of the single darkest wood guitars that she had ever seen, like a deep mahogany.  
“Thanks...I guess?” Laura says, unsure as to whether or not she was being complimented.  
“No, I mean it, your lyrics are really good. Like something that I can finally actually work with.” Carmilla says, now looking rather sheepish. “Do you want to run through what we are going to play tonight, maybe?”  
“That sounds great.” Laura smiles back at her, excited that the older woman had actually liked her work. The other girls reached for their instruments as LaF moved over so that they were sitting on a drumbox since the neighbors might have been put out with noise should they use an actual drum-set.  
Carmilla was a different sort of person from the rest of the group, but she meshed well with most of them. She was a bit darker and a it more quiet, but it worked well with their dynamic. LaFontaine had been right, Laura thought, her voice was rich and sultry and she could seriously jam on the guitar. She was almost glad now that Elsie had left, playing with Carmilla was a lot better. It seemed like the raven haired woman was reading her mind, and knew almost before she did how she wanted something to sound. They were totally in sync. It was written across everyone’s faces as they played and sang, and sang and played, this was a lot more fun. Yes, music was meant to be fun and joyful. that was exactly what Naked Human was feeling. Carmilla was definitely in.   
The little group was packing up to go home for an hour or so before it was time to get set up for the show, when Danny Lawrence pulled Carmilla aside.  
“Hey, um, thank you for stepping in so quickly and on such short notice.” she says, arms folded across her chest looking not at all grateful.  
“It’s no problem.” she replies, about to stop away when Danny stops her short.  
“I mean that. All of this is really really important to Laura. She pours her heart and soul into this band, thinking that she’s doing it all for us. Really, it’s her that needs it. Without it, she would probably fall apart. Just...don’t ruin this for her. she needs all of this, and we need her.” Danny explains, leaving Carmilla feeling confused and a little bit pissed off. She was pretty sure that she had just been threatened and she wasn’t sure why. She had heard a lot about the little group from LaF, and knew of how defensive they all were of their little leader, particularly the Jelly Red Giant, and why she just didn’t know why she had already been labeled a threat by the bassist.

\-----/////-----

Carmilla went home and laid out on her bed, listening to the little playlist that LaFontaine had made her of Naked Humans’ songs. Laura’s voice was soft and sweet the majority of the time, and it portrayed emotion really well. When she wished, Laura Hollis could stir listeners up into a rage or bring them to tears, she could have you laughing in one breath and on the floor ready for Jesus to take you home in the next. Singing with her had very much been a true pleasure. Carmilla had very much been a true pleasure. Carmilla had actually enjoyed playing with a group for the first time in a very long time. the music had been magnetic, and had pulled the small group of people together. The musician had been able to feel it all echoing within her chest, and she was looking forward to joining them again.

\-----/////------  
Laura paced again and again across the stage, worrying over one thing or another. She needed absolutely everything to be perfect. Her heart pounded against the inside of her ribcage to the point that she worried that a few of them might end up cracking. She seemed to be doing a lot of worrying lately. Laura couldn’t help it.  
“Creampuff… take a deep breath and sit down for a minute. Everything looks great.” Carmilla advises drolly when she comes in with her guitar and a leather jacket draped over her shoulder.  
“Are you sure? How do you think the lights look?” the little singer asked, breathless and beautiful.   
“Fantastic. I tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t so I just came on over.” Carmilla explains herself.  
“That’s alright. You can help me with the sound.” Laura nods having not at all done one of the things that Carmilla had recommended.  
The older girl stepped up onto the stage, set up her guitar, and plugged it in. She strums up some chords and allows Laura to get the balance just right.  
“I love the band’ name, who came up with it?” Carmilla asks since Laura needed to get her microphone balanced as well.   
“We voted. It was a group decision.” Laura replies as though she were much too busy to be having the conversation.  
“Who threw it into the ring though?” Carmilla asks, noting that Laura’s cheeks had gone pink.  
“It was me, after the book by Christopher Poindexter.” Laura forces herself to say, hating now nerdy that made her seem.  
“You’re into poetry, then. He’s pretty good for a contemporary. I’ve always been more into the golden oldies. Chaucer, Blake, Byron, and Frost, are just a few of my favorites.” Carmilla smiled, quirking her head at Laura in a rather reassuring manner.  
“Do you write at all?” Laura asks, taking an interest in the conversation then.  
“I try, but I never seem to get all of the way there. It’s nothing at all like what you can do. You are much better than I will ever be.” Carmilla says sheepishly.  
“It’s good enough that you try.” Laura says with a nod. “I appreciate any attempts at art.”  
“Cool.” Carmilla replies with a nod.  
“I can always take a look at some of your stuff, maybe help you out and give you some pointers.” Laura offers, surprising Carmilla.  
“That would be awesome, thank you.” Carmilla says, playing a few chords on the piano.  
“What can’t you do?” Laura asks.  
“We literally just established that I can’t write like you can.” she chuckles in relu, sitting on a speaker and plucking her guitar a little bit.  
“But you are ten times the guitarist that I am.” Laura nods to the way her fingers keep dancing across the strings.  
“You could get there if you tried, it all just takes practice.” Carmilla repeated the old refrain that Laura had heard oh-so-many times.  
“I don’t have much time for practice.” Laura grumbles.  
“You do seem the type to run yourself truly ragged.” Carmilla nods to herself in understanding. “Do you have a regular job on top of this one?”  
“Yeah, do you?”  
“Yeah.”  
They dissolve into quiet work as Carmilla fiddles with instruments. It wasn’t even uncomfortable silence, the pair were a good team, moving around one another perfectly without getting in one another’s way. Laura would glance over every now and then and just admire the older girl. She had been unable to keep from noticing that Carmilla was beautiful in the most breathtaking of ways. She had done her best to avoid observing the way Carmilla’s long fingers and strong hands gripped the neck of the guitar.  
Carmilla had allowed herself complete awareness of Laura, noticing the sparks of intelligence in her bright brown eyes and the way that her hair showed like spun gold when touched by the stage lights. Carmilla absorbed it all eagerly. She was crushingly curious to know everything that she possibly could about the girl behind all of those pieces of music. The words held so much depth and soul and the musician very much wanted to find the place within Laura where it all came from. Even just a glimpse would suffice.  
\-----/////-----  
The others began to trickle in soon. LaFontaine couldn’t help but to grin at what they came in to find. Carmilla and Laura were sitting on the stage on the floor talking animatedly, their heads close together, completely invested in their conversation. Laura Hollis, usually so very on the ball, didn’t even notice that LaF, Perry, and Danny were standing in the doorway watching them. they couldn’t help but to find the sight adorable. Laura hadn’t looked that happy in a long time.  
“They would make a cute couple.” Perry supposes.  
“I thought so. I just didn’t think that I would have made this much progress so quickly.” LaF says, sounding pleased with themself.  
“You mean that you planned for them to end up together when you asked Karnstein to join up.” Danny asks, sounding shocked.  
“Not exactly that, I just thought they could both use somebody like one another in their lives. They both needed somebody and none of us seemed to be helping.” LaF says in reply.  
“You’re the absolute sweetest.” Perry laughs and LaFontaine shrugs her off.  
“I just wanted to take care of my people.” they say with a blush.  
“Hey, gang, you ready to rock and roll?:” Laura asks with a happy smile.  
“Sure thing. Always ready to roll around.” LaF answers with a grin.

\-----/////-----

Laura adjusted her guitar strap on her shoulder, getting ready for the final soundcheck before showtime began.  
“Are you nervous, Creampuff?” Carmilla asks, looking completely at ease with her electric laying across her hips.  
“A little, I just didn’t expect it to get this hot in here.” Laura tries to shake off her butterflies as she puts down her guitar and shrugs off her jacket, leaving her in a maroon crop top and black shorts.  
“If you were to ask me, you’re only making it hotter.” Carmilla says with a wink before going out on stage, just so Laura couldn’t say anything back.  
Laura blushes a deep red before following, embedding herself with the sound of the club, the drums, the bass, and Carmilla’s electric. She waits for a couple of beats, allowing her eyes to adjust ot the lights and joins in. The vibrations of her guitar against her body made for a soothing constant, keeping her grounded, making sure that all of the excitement wouldn’t just fill her up and cause her to fly away. Afterwards, the only part of the entire set that she could remember was Carmilla jumping onto the to of a speaker and practically ripping her guitar to shreds, she was playing so hard, and how tangled their chords got when they leaned back against one another to play, like a pair of professionals.

\-----//////------  
“That was probably the best show that we have ever played.” LaF says as they pack up their drum-set and the others obediently put everything into the back of their truck.  
“It was at least the most fun show that we’ve ever done. It was like it was all electrified. I still have goosebumps.” Danny agrees, a thin sheen of sweat still on her forehead.  
“Watching you all bounce around like a bunch of hooligans was fun enough for me, thank you very much.” Perry laughs. “Especially you, Ms. Karnstein, what would you have done if you had fallen?”  
“I didn’t though, did I? I’m just fine. All in a good day’s work.” she says with a shrug as she puts band-aids over the tips of Laura’s bleeding fingers, her own already covered.  
“I would’ve caught her.” Laura offers, coming to her new friend’s defense.  
“We had her covered..” Danny adds.  
“You are all very reckless.” Perry scolds.  
“Yes, but our fancy new contract would suggest hta that is a good thing.” LaF says with a happy grin.  
“You bet that it does!” Danny shouts, high-fiving LaFontaine.  
“I would say so.” Carmilla grins cheerily as well.  
“Me too.” Laura agrees, turning to find their new guitarist already gazing at her, and leaning in. Laura hadn’t noticed that she was leaning in too until their lips met and she was breathing the older girl in.


	7. Soulmate AU

Carmilla had three soulmate tattoos going down her spine in a row, and Ell had been the third, a stone heart in the center of back. She really should have known that that one would not have known that that one would end well. Carmilla had been sure that she wouldn’t ever have another great love of her life after the poet in France, the owner of the fountain pen that decorated the base of her neck. The vampire had been sure that that had been the last of her very tragic love life.  
Then, at some point in the span of time during 1995-1996, the skin across her lower left ribcage had burned like fire lit on her body. The pain had been a good pain, though, like when a thorn is pulled out of the bottom of her foot. Carmilla distantly remembered the sensation from her living youth, and was immediately panic stricken. How could it be possible for her to have a soulmate? the vampire wasn’t even sure that she was still in possession of a soul.  
She crawled out from underneath her covers, and pulled up her loose t-shirt to see what the mark might look b. Printed perfectly against her pale white skin was a pair of grey wings. One was bent at an odd angle, clearly broken, the other was carefully folded. Carmilla had absolutely no idea what it meant or could mean. Then again, that’s how soulmate markings work, you don’t understand at all until you do.   
Laura herself had just been born that day, a black cat dancing across her own rib-cage. It took nineteen years for Laura to realize what the black cat meant. It was another half of a year before Carmilla understood the broken wings. That first night in the library, locked away from everyone


	8. RomComs

“Laura, what the hell are we watching?” Carmilla asks, laying down across the couch, her head in Laura’s lap and legs hanging off over the arm and in the air. Laura was starting to get insulted by how many of their conversations started like that.  
“Which girl commits suicide?” was her next question.  
“Neither, and it’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color” so shut up and enjoy a theatrical masterpiece.” Laura hisses.  
“You’re reading the subtitles, why do you need to hear them speaking French?” Carmilla continues to tease her.  
“Just hush, you.” Laura groans.  
“Have you seen it before?” Carmilla asks, enjoying getting to mess with Laura alone and in peace.  
“Yes, but I want to watch it again, so shut up.” Laura whines.  
“We both know that one of them is going to cheat on the other anyways.” Carmilla pouts petulantly.  
Laura bites her lip to refrain from giving away any spoilers, sure Carmilla was being an ass, but she deserved the pain that came along with getting invested in “Blue Is The Warmest Color”.

\------//////------

“What the fucking hell?! I was joking! Are you messing with me right now?!” Carmilla pauses the movie and jumps around angrily.  
“Nope, not messing with you at all.” Laura almost laughs through her tears.  
“Does it at least have a happy ending?” Carmilla asks with a pout again.  
“No, but if it helps, that vagina from before was actually made out of plastic according to rumors.” Laura offers.  
“Yeah, it gives me giggles on the inside.” Carmilla lays back down across Laura’s lap and smiles.


	9. Washing Dishes

“You cooked, I’ll do the dishes.” Laura offers after dinner. She fills the sink with scalding hot water and let her mind drift while Carmilla went about her nighttime routine. After having somehow graduated with her life and limbs intact, Carmilla had surprised Laura with the keys to a studio apartment. The vampiress had thought that she might faint.  
“They had lived there together ever since. Lara was living her dreams as a low level journalist and an incredibly popular blogger online. They were happy, much happier than Carmilla could have ever thought that she could ever be allowed to be.  
It had been hard to get to a good place again. Laura had had an identity crises there for a bit, she had no idea of who she was without her black and white view of the world. Everything had changed when she had begun to see the world in different shades of grey. Carmilla was one of those multiple shades, and that particular color was probably her favorite. I was most definitely her favorite.  
Carmilla could see her in a different light as well now. Laura scrubbed harder as she thought about it. Laura had sacrificed everything that she believed in to save Carmilla’s life (afterlife?), and it had probably been the hardest decision that she had ever made, still, if she were back there again, she knew that she would make that same decision again.  
“Laura, are you done?” Carmilla asks,popping in from around the corner in her red silken house robe.  
“Just finished.” she smiled when she saw Carmilla grinning at her softly.  
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Carmilla looks at her with confusion and concern.  
“Because I love you and I don’t think that I or anyone else has told you that enough.” Laura says as she dries off her hands.  
“I love you, too, Cupcake.” Carmilla hugs her tightly against her chest, unsure of what was going on, but knowing that when it came to Laura, hugs could only help and never hurt. As long as she was wanted, Carmilla knew that she would be around to hug Laura when she needed it.


	10. Scars

“Laura, I’m so sorry.” Carmilla apologizes sadly for the thousandth time.  
“Carm, I’m going to be just fine. Don’t worry about it.” Laura rolls her eyes as she tries to stand up.   
“I really shouldn’t have allowed you to leave the library on your own. I should have known that you wouldn’t be able to take the pressure of everyone at once. Laura, none of this is your fault. Stop blaming yourself. Stop trying to make amends on your own, Cupcake, you have people who love you and are more than willing to help you. Let them.” Carmilla offered, holding one of Laura’s bruised hands in both of her own. Seeing her tiny human ex-girlfriend in so much pain kind of hurt her heart. This was exactly what she had worked very hard to prevent from happening to her. Just because Laura had hurt her even as much as she did, that didn’t stop her from loving Laura incredibly deeply.  
Carmilla kissed her knuckle and tried hard to stop herself from feeling like crap over it. It had all been Laura’s decision to go and Carmilla knew that she couldn’t have stopped the tiny human from doing something that she had put her mind to. Still, it hurt her to know that she could have done something, but couldn’t. Carmilla rubbed her thumb across Laura’s knuckles over and over again, before Laura realized that it didn’t hurt anymore for Laura to touch them.  
“Ah, Carm?” she asked, looking concerned about herself for the first time.  
“Yes?” she asked.  
“Do you think that maybe you just made the scars on my knuckles go away?” Laura asks, looking incredibly confused. She shakes her hand, realizing that there was no pain in it.  
“That isn’t on the very long list of my powers.” Carmilla protests.  
“Unless…”Laura says thoughtfully.  
“Unless, what?” Carmilla asks. 

“Kiss my knuckles on my other hand.” Laura orders. Carmilla rolls her eyes and doesn’t take them off of Laura’s once as she lowers her lips to Laura’s hand. The knuckles tingled before healing instantly.  
“Soulmates… we’re soulmates.” Carmilla groans. “That just makes soooo much sense.”  
“Please, try and sound more upset about that.”


	11. Amnesia

“Carmilla, you just have to know that she might not be completely the same. Laura will be confused and disoriented, so just be patient and gentle, okay?” LaFontaine reminds the worried vampire. She understood that, as a vampire, she wasn’t exactly known for being either of those particular things.  
“I am aware.” Carmilla replies shortly, doing her best to remain calm. She didn’t understand why things could never just go easily for them. One crises after another was always afoot.  
“She doesn’t seem to be recognizing anyone. Not me, not Perry, not Danny...we are so hoping for you to be the exception that proves the rule, even if it’s just so that she will allow me to change her bandages.” LaF looks desperate and sad, their hair all wilty and their brows drawn together in consternation.  
“Me too, Doc. Me too.” Carmilla rubs her face with the heels of her hands. She doesn’t physically tire very easily, but her mental and emotional strength reserves were incredibly depleted.  
“Through here.” LaF gestures to a crude partition made of a sheet.  
Laura sat crouching in a corner, hiding behind her IV rack, looking terrified. HEr eyes were all wide as saucers. She clenched a scalpel in one of her tight fists, prepared to defend herself if necessary.  
“Carmilla, oh thank God that you’re here! Where am I? Who are these people?” she asks desperately, trying to force her way up onto her feet.  
“Laura, honey, these are my friends. They’re your friends too. Can’t you remember them?” Carmilla prompts in a gentle voice.  
“Everything’s fuzzy, all of the past few months. The only thing that’s clear is you.” Laura winces like her head is killing her.  
“Do you remember Xena? She helped you to catch me and tie me up.” Carmilla puts a hand on the tall redhead’s shoulder.  
“LaF tries to steal my blood samples regularly, even when the two of us are in bed asleep.” Carmilla tries to remind Laura of the people that she loves most in the world.  
“I remember both of those things. I sort of remember both of you as well.... Danny, you’re dead.” Laura looks incredibly confused.  
“Technically we both are.” Carmilla says with a shrug, picking up Laura and putting her back in the bed.  
“Vampires…” Laura whispers to herself.  
“Exactly right, sundance.” Carmilla confirms. “Now, you can’t remember anyone else, so why do you know me?” she actually looks very confused on top of being incredibly concerned.   
“Besides my father, you are the most important person in the world to me. I don’t think that I could possibly ever forget you...even if I tried.” Laura confesses, holding open her arms to the vampiress who folds herself into them gently.  
“I love you too.” Carmilla answers.


	12. Halloween

“There is no way in hell itself that I am going to wear this, Cupcake.” Carmilla growls though she can hear a hint of laughter in her vampiric girlfriend’s voice.  
“But you will look so cute.” Laura protests.  
“It’s insulting and demeaning and downright cruel of you to ask.” Carmilla grumbles some more drawing the blood red drop ruby choker more tightly around her neck.  
“Technically you aren’t even dressing up for Halloween. It’s more like you’re wearing old clothes of your own.” Laura offers weakly, stepping up behind the centuries old bad as to fasten the clip for her.  
“And you? What’s with your costume or lack thereof?”  
“What, you don’t like it?” Laura asks teasingly, pretending to model her “Team Jacob” t-shirt.  
“It’s not funny.”  
“The others, however, are going to love it.”Laura proclaims with a snarky wink.  
“My sense of humor is beginning to rub off onto you.” Carmilla smiles back, bright red lipstick freshly applied.   
“I wouldn’t say that that is a bad thing.”  
“You wouldn’t.”


	13. School Dance

“Laura, are you serious?” Carmilla asks.  
“Yes, I seriously am serious.” Laura says with a firm look on her face despite the ridiculous words coming out of her mouth.  
“I really should have known that you would buy into this nonsense.” Carmilla shakes her head in amusement. “Why does everything have to be such a spectacle nowadays?” she asks herself as Laura runs ahead to her class after a quick kiss on the cheek. She slams her locker door shut, giving her the idea for the perfect promposal.  
The next morning Carmilla watched from afar as Laura approached her locker, doing her absolute best to blend into the surrounding crowd of students. Her breath caught as Laura opened it, and almost a hundred and fifty ping pong balls fell out. Laura jumps back and grabs for them desperately, to stick them back in. She catches two or three to see that they all only say ‘Prom?’ in Carmilla’s scrawling handwriting. Laura’s head twists around looking for her girlfriend whom she knows is probably watching form some hiding place.   
She steps back to get a better look around land on a promposal ping pong ball. Her head hits hard on the hard tile floor. Laura slides into the dark instantly. A split second later, Carmilla is there, scooping her up and into her arms.   
“I wanna go with you anyways, don’t worry.”


	14. First Kiss

“Carmilla, do you remember our first kiss?” Laura asks, curled naked under the comforter around her.  
“Of course, I don’t think that I could ever forget. You just wouldn’t stop talking.” Carmilla laughs at the memory.  
“So, you’re a giant black cat, huh?” Laura asks, laughing as well.  
“I’m not quite sure that I had ever been happier in my entire life.” Carmilla smiles softly at her.  
“Me either. I was so incredibly relieved to see you there, not dead and standing up that I could have imploded.” Laura kisses the hollow of her shoulder.  
“Yeah, I was feeling pretty good about it too.” the vampiress laughs.  
“I bet.” Laura agrees. “I think that that was probably when I realized that I was in love with you.” she finally admits.  
“Really?” Carmilla turns over to look into Laura’s eyes.  
“Yeah, I really do.” Laura replies, playing with Carmilla’s hair.  
“I love you, too.” Carmilla smiles back and kisses the younger girl happily. “I take it back. This moment, this moment right here is the absolute happiest moment of my life.” she kisses Laura again.”  
“I can’t really say that I disagree either.” Laura tickles Carmilla’s ribs and kisses her randomly all over as the vampire laughs.


	15. Whovian

“Laura, what the hell are you watching?” Carmilla asks, halfway through the first episode of the first series of Doctor Who.  
“My all time favorite television show in the history of ever.” Laura answers, looking excited at the prospect of exposing Carmilla to something that she loved. Iste of as excited as Laura was, Carmilla looked as bored as she possibly could get.  
“So, this guy, he randomly appears into what was then the modern day, picks an unsuspecting victim that fits his criteria, and sweeps them off and into time and space?” Carmilla asks a few moments later, sounding incredulous.  
“They can say ‘no’, if they want to, it’s a choice. I’m not sure about why anyone would ever turn him down, though.” Laura sighs wistfully.  
“Of course. If they did it wouldn’t make a very good show then would it? And if he took them after they had said ‘no’ it would be kidnapping.” Carmilla agrees teasingly. “Would you go off with him, though? would you run away, be his companion, and leave me behind?” she asks, and Laura can sense a need for reassurance in her voice.  
“Never. I would drag you along with me. We could be his companions together. He occasionally has couples as companions.” Laura snuggles into Carmilla’s side then, and settles there, on arm wrapped around the vampire’s side and held her close.  
“I’m quite pleased with you being my companion and my companion only if you don’t mind.” the vampiress says drolly. “Though it might be fun to take you back in time and show you all of the wonderful things that I have seen.”  
“I think that I would like that a lot too.”  
\------//////------

Carmilla imagined herself as the Doctor, dressed similarly to the ninth, but of course with her own spin on it. She would wear a white button down with black suspenders hooked to black skinny jeans, a leather jacket tight around her shoulders on top of it all. She would have used the tenth’s screwdriver...just because she prefers the blue color to the green. It made for a happy fantasy to dwell on while Laura watched her show.

\------//////------

“Run!” she yells, her boots pounding the ground as she races to catch up with the little human ahead of her.  
“What does it look like I am doing?!” Laura shouts back.  
“Certainly not going fast enough!” Carmilla reaches forwards and grabs the back of her companion’s shirt and drags her into a little gap between two buildings.  
“What the hell was that thing?” Laura asks once she has caught her breath.  
“A Krafayis. It’s from a pack of the awful things and it has gotten left behind here. They are a brutal race and only care to destroy and eat.”  
“Poor thing, it must be so lonely.” Laura sympathizes.  
“I’m not so sure that they are even capable of that much emotion.” Carmilla says thoughtfully. “I guess that talking to it isn’t out of the realm of possibility, at the least.”  
“Maybe we could take him or her or it or they back to the past.” Laura suggests.  
“You are much too sweet.” Carmilla leans forward and drops a kiss onto the top of her head and heads back out into the street. “Now to do something incredibly stupid and find it.”  
\------//////-----

“What have I told you about following me into dangerous situations?!” Carmilla scolds.  
“That you would never ever allow anything bad to happen to me as long as it was within your power, and that a lot of things are within your power?” Laura offers as her answer.  
“Well...yes, but that’s not what I meant at all and you know it. If I think that a situation is dangerous enough that I ask you to stay back, please just do that and and stay like I asked. It’s harder to work when I’m working on keeping you alive on top of myself.” Carmilla says, sounding exhausted and old.  
Laura forgot sometimes that her Doctor was well over 900 years old and had seen things that the much younger human could never even dream up. She was ancient and old and incredibly lonely. That was why Laura always stayed. She and the Time Lord needed one another.  
“You’re my companion, Laura, and yes I have sworn an oath to protect you. I have promised myself that I would never lose another one. I care about you, and it would kill me to lose you and I would always remember, though every regeneration, even the ones that won’t love you like I do. It would haunt me for the rest of my very long life.” Carmilla said, staring off into the distance, and Laura knew that she was remembering all of the companions that had come before her.  
“You aren’t going to lose me. Haven’t you figured out yet that I am much too stubborn to die? I can take care of myself. That’s one of the reasons that you picked me, right?” Laura says, sitting next to her Doctor until the older woman turned to look at her. They made eye contact, Carmilla’s dark and hooded with emotions. Laura grabs her suspenders in strong little fists, pulls her close and kisses her. “And don’t you ever forget that either.” The Doctor wasn’t sure if she was talking about the kiss or what Laura had told, so she decided to remember both forever.


	16. Accidentally Married

“Laura, what are we going to do?!” Carmilla asks, looking truly good and panicked.  
“It’s just a formality and it was probably going to happen eventually anyways. Just leave it alone.” the younger girl recommends.  
“I’ve been alive for over three hundred years and nothing this really and truly ridiculous has ever happened to me. How do we make it go away?’ Carmilla actually looks serious about it, surprising Laura.  
“Oh? So, I’m your first wife? That’s pretty good to know.” Laura laughs almost sarcastically. “Would being married to me really be all that terrible? I kind of like the sound of calling myself your wife. It sounds permanent and final and that is how my love for you feels.”  
“It’s not that, Cupcake. It’s just that if this were ever going to happen, I would want it to be special, romantic, and I would want it to most definitely not have been a freaking accident, damn it. I love you, Laura. Finally and permanently, and I would have wanted to spend every single moment of our wedding proving that to you. Hell, I didn’t even get to propose.” Carmilla complains, running a hand through her hair.  
“Who says that you would have been the one doing the proposing?” Laura asks, teasingly.  
“You can make that up to me with the honeymoon.”


	17. Watching Crappy TV

“Every little thing that you watch on television seems to just get worse and worse, doesn’t it?” Carmilla asks as she drops down beside of Laura onto the couch in their dorm room.  
“Oh, I wasn’t even paying attention to it. It’s just on for the noise. You can change it if you want to.” Laura says dismissively.  
“I’ll leave it and see what kind of noise you’re hearing.” Carmilla laughs, she isn’t paying attention either, only playing with Laura’s hair in an attempt to distract her. It works and with a huff she sets her laptop aside and settles in beside of her vampiric girlfriend.  
“You win. What’s on?” Laura asks as though this were a major inconvenience.  
“Housewives of something or other. They all seem to yell at one another a lot. For being so very rich you would think that they would be off doing something to do make themselves happy.” Carmilla laughs.  
“They’re awful and petty and mean.” Laura agrees.  
“It’s so bad that it’s kind of funny.” Carmilla adds.  
“They want to pray on our natural love of drama to reel us in, to make us keep watching it. We really shouldn’t give in.” Laura thinks aloud.  
Neither one of them gets up to change the channel. Instead they discuss how awful the entire premise of the show is and enjoy one another’s company.


	18. Content

“Hey, Carmilla,” Laura begins softly, hating to break the peaceful and soothing silence. “I just thought that you should know that I don’t think that I have ever been happier in my life.” she is curled around Carmilla, her head on the vampire’s bare shoulder, their breathing in time, even, and relaxed.  
“What makes you say that?” Carmilla asks, turning her head to look at Laura with a sense of mild confusion.  
“I just feel so at peace right now.” Laura says with a sigh for the moment. “Here, with you, right now, I feel safe. I feel the most calm. I feel like I have you and I have what I need to be happy and I am.” she wraps her arm around Carmilla’s waist and squeezes gently.  
“I understand what you mean. I never thought that this could at all ever be possible.” Carmilla replies. “For a while there it seemed as though everything that could go wrong did.”  
“If you asked me, this, right here and right now makes every single thing, every little bit of it worth it.” Carmilla says, reaching over and stroking Laura’s hair, pulling her in and kissing her, nipping at her lips every now and then. She ran her fingers through that hair and pulled Laura as close in as possible. Every touch still lit them both on fire like the first. Every time they kissed, they would have sworn that they could have flown. Their hearts still beat at double time and thy just pray that it could last forever.


	19. Trying to Stop Her

“Laura, get back here!” Danny yells at the tiny future journalist, form one of the upstairs windows as the younger girl uses a rope of tied together sheets to escape the mansion that was currently under siege. Laura ignores Danny’s protests and continues her descent, intent upon getting to Carmilla.  
“This is crazy, Laura!” LaF yells from another window directly below Danny’s. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”  
“What does it matter anyway? It’s my fault that all of this is happening and if I go, maybe it will all stop. If I stop Carmilla in the process, I’ll maybe have done something good, for once.” she shouts back, not caring anymore that she was scaring her friends. Laura drops the last few feet to the ground, attracting the attention of some zombified Zetas and Summers. Laura glances up at her two best friends for a half-second before she starts to run. She runs faster than she can ever remember having run before in her life.  
“Screw this.” Danny grumbles, reaching out for the linens that had provided Laura’s escape.  
“Screw nothing.” says Perry, reaching out with scissors and cutting the cloth shorts. “I am not going to let anyone get hurt to stop so long as I’m the Floor Don.”  
“How is Laura going to get back inside now?!” LaF asks sounding scared.  
“She should have thought of that before abandoning us to feral vampire who threatened to kill the next one of us who came anywhere near her.”  
“There is something very wrong with you.” LaF shakes their head in confusion and fear, unsure of what was going on anymore.  
“Everything will end up being okay.” Perry reassures everyone as they regroup in the living room where Laura’s camera had been set up. Now the room just felt empty. “Now, everyone head into the dining room so that I can find us something to eat. That will make you all feel better.”  
“Nothing will make us feel better until Hollis gets back. “If Hollis gets back.” Danny growls.

\-----/////----

Laura’s feet struck the ground over and over, the force of it shaking her entire body with each step. She had to slow once she reached the forest for fear of running right into a tree. She had toyed with the idea of climbing one, but scrapped it. She couldn’t scramble up fast enough to get to safety, or out of the reach of a bow and arrow before ending up skewered. Laura entire body throbbed now and she still hadn’t caught even a glance of the giant black panther for which she had been searching. It was dark out now and Laura couldn’t see far enough ahead to see where she was putting her feet.  
Fear coursed through her veins, pushing her onwards anyway. Her foot caught on an exposed root and she went rolling, head over heels, the air knocked out of her lungs. Faster than she could process it, she slammed into a tree and everything went dark. As Carmilla had watched from the safety of the shadows of the leaves in the trees, she saw her former lover’s body crumple at the base of an old oak. She didn’t want to, but she still cared, so she leapt from her hiding place to the ground in front of Laura.  
She roared angrily just once, enough to make the approaching army flinch back and grabbed Laura up on her human form and ran. There were a series of caves where she had been hiding that she brought Laura too. She laid her out and ran back to the cave entrance to look out with vampiric vision for anyone who followed. She wasn’t above killing to protect Laura. She wasn’t above much of anything at the moment.  
Carmilla returned to Laura’s side and knelt down beside of her to check for any wounds or injuries that she needed to treat. Aside from a large bump and scrape combination on her hairline, there was nothing that Carmilla could see. There was no reason that she could tell for Laura to still be unconscious. Gently, the vampiress placed Laura’s head into her lap and allowed her to sleep. She very much didn’t want to, but still she cared.  
It enraged her that Laura had betrayed Mattie’s secret to Danny, but it hurt even more that she could understand why Laura had done it. She had told Xena for the same reason that Carmilla had initially betrayed her sister to Laura in the first place, to keep someone that they care about safe. It killed Carmilla to know that Mattie was gone. It hurt her even more to know that she was the reason why It ached in her chest a little bit more when she thought about the effect that it had had on her relationship with Laura, the only person that she had found worth bringing down her entire world for. Now, it felt as though everything hurt.  
“Carmilla…” Laura mumbled as she regained consciousness. She wasn’t even aware yet, but it was the vampiress that she asked for. That touched Carmilla somewhere deep down in a place that she had thought had already disappeared.  
“Yeah, I’m here Poptart.” she answers in a voice much more tender than she had meant.  
“What happened? I can’t see you.” Laura asks, sounding terrified.  
“You fell and hit your head pretty hard against a tree. Your vision could be blurry for a good while, yet.” Carmilla explains. “Don’t sit up, yet. I’m going to patrol before I get you back to Maman’s apartments.”  
Laura felt Carmilla’s strong hands, gently place her head back onto the ground. A naked Carmilla melts down in Laura’s blurred vision into a large black cat that takes off to hunt down anyone that might threaten them. Laura would always choose her. Hse had been only able to see in black and white at the beginning of her freshman year, now she saw black, white, grays, blues, reds, and yellows. Laura could see in color now. Carmilla was one of the brightest colors that she had ever seen.  
The cat stalked back into the cave, luckily with no blood on her jaws or in her teeth that Laura could see. She smiled weakly when a rough tongue licked her forehead and cheek in an uninjured place. Laura’s eyes began to droop and close as the purring beastie wrapped herself around the injured college girl. Carmilla still cared for Laura, no matter how begrudgingly, and she was very sure that Laura still cared about her. It was written all over her scratched and beaten face. It was obvious in the fact that Laura had come after her or why she had come when she knew that Carmilla had promised to kill the next person who came near her. She watched Laura sleep and couldn’t help but to feel warmed inside, just like she had when they were together. She would stop if she could, but she couldn’t help loving Laura Hollis.


	20. Stargazer

“I’m going outside to look at the stars, do you want to join me?” Carmilla asks, knowing that if Laura were actually to go with her, next to no stargazing would actually end up happening. However, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing either to be completely honest.

“No thank you, Carm. I’m going to research for a while more, there’s a whole school that needs saving. Maybe next time.” she says dismissively without even glancing up.

Carmilla leaves the room without saying anything else before dissipating and reappearing on the roof. She dangles her feet over the edge and just stares up at the sky for hours dreaming about an alternate universe where she had been born into this day and age as a normal girl who could fall in love with an equally normal Laura. They could have been high school sweethearts who went to the same normal college where there was no one to save. Where there was no one for her to fail to save. Where there was no one she could disappoint by not being a perfect heroine to a hero worshipping college sophomore. Where there was no age difference or emotionally manipulative mothers who lock people in coffins when they fall in love. She was chained to this perfect prison of a college where she had everything that she could ever want.

After a few hours she grew bored of her constant internal debates and struggles and headed downstairs, completely unaware of how late the hour had grown. The dimwit squad had fallen asleep, Laura conspicuously missing, had dozed off on top of piles of papers and files that they had gathered from their many ridiculous exploits, LaF with their face way too close for comfort to some dangerous chemicals that could probably kill them if they inhaled too deeply. Quickly and quietly so as not to disturb their much needed rest, Carmilla lifted the scientist and their best friend each over one shoulder and ran them to their chosen bedroom and put them to bed on top of the covers. She wandered aimlessly around looking for her tiny blonde journalist girlfriend until her pacing brought her back up to the roof. That was where she found her, talking to the sky like a complete dope.

“...and I wish that Carmilla would smile more. I know that she’s a vampire and you probably don’t answer vampire related wishes, but I’m not a vampire and I love her. So, I just want you, whoever you are to help me to help her. I just want her to happier. I hope that that isn’t too much to ask.” Laura was finishing up her wish as Carmilla snuck up behind her and took a seat next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. 

“You’re going to get cold sitting up here at night like that.” she warns with an almost smile that warmed Laura right down to her toes.

“How much of that did you hear?” she asks, as the blood rises to her cheeks in a blush.

“Enough.” she presses a kiss to Laura’s lips that robbed the younger girl of all of her breath.

“Eavesdropping is rude, Carm.”  
“I never claimed to be the most polite undead fiend in the world, did I?”

“I guess not.”


	21. Insides and Outsides

words: 342

Carmilla was hard on the outside, she was all muscle, cold and strong. Her mother had called her ‘diamond’ and she wasn’t wrong. I have never seen anything more more rare, precious, or beautiful. Her mother had never seen the parts of the vampire that I had. On the inside, Carmilla could burn. Carmilla could burn more brightly than any sun. Carmilla would never allow that to be seen outside.  
People wonder about how I can trust her. They’ve never seen what I’ve been allowed to. The inside can be so different. Maybe that’s why they say to never judge a book by its cover. Her cover, while stunning, doesn’t at all accurately show a glimmer of all of the things that are buried beneath. With me, she’s all warmth. With me she is a rolling flame, always willing to curl up under a blanket and wraps herself around my smaller form.  
I love the both sides of her. I love every side of her. I love the warm and fluff private side of her. I love that side that is always willing to show me how much she cares about me. I also love the strong, stolid, and silent side, always on the lookout and always ready and prepared to protect me and the other people that she cares about me at all times. Her heart is secretly so good and kind, I worry that she might be a little bit ashamed of that, or embarrassed.  
Both the inside and the outside parts of Carmilla Karnstein have their places in the world. the inside part of her takes care of the inside parts of me. The outside parts of her are always willing and ready to fight for me as well. I love her protective instincts. The kindness on her insides are never a lie. I don’t think her capable. I can see it in her eyes that she loves me. Maybe that is why they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Hers can see straight through.


	22. Childhood Friends HC

Laura was three or four years old at the time and playing contentedly in a sandbox when they first met, though there was no way she remembered it. Her dad had been momentarily distracted and the little girl had just been sitting there all alone and Carmilla couldn't resist comforting the beautiful child.   
"It's alright. I'm sure he'll be right back. It's all okay." Carmilla reassured her, amazed at the trust in the baby's eyes. She was much too young to understand the things that Carmilla was capable of, of what she was. But then again, maybe that wasn't the case because here they are, fifteen years later and Laura understands but is still looking at her with those same trusting brown eyes and telling her that she doesn't care...never did care. That she only cares about who Carmilla really is.


	23. Meet on a Plane AU

“Hi, I’m Laura Hollis. This is my first time on an airplane. Have you ever flown before? What’s your name?”   
Carmilla could not believe that this tiny human honestly believed that she was wanting to talk. Her face was buried in a German translation of a book by Socrates that had been published before Laura’s grandmother’s grandmother had been born. Carmilla was still wearing all black, had her headphones in and hadn’t even looked up when the (admittedly attractive) girl child had approached and announced that they were seat buddies.  
“What are you? Twelve?” Carmilla said by way of response.  
“Nineteen, but people almost always think that I’m younger than I am because of how short I am. I’m 5’2. I’m sorry, but I still haven’t caught your name.” the girl rambled some more.  
“Carmilla. My name is Carmilla, Cupcake.” she rumbled.  
“It’s nice to meet you, Carmilla. Where are you headed to?” Laura asked.  
“College.” was her one word reply.  
“Me too! I’m going to Silas University. Where are you going?” she asked just as cheerily as ever as she took out a large package of cookies.  
“Same. Does everyone there talk as much as you do?” Carmilla tried to take a jab at her as she stole one of Laura’s cookies without asking.  
“Dunno, this will be my first year. I’ve never even left the town I was born in before. Now, here I am and I’m on an airplane on my own, talking to strangers without my dad looking over my shoulder, staying in a dorm room and finally getting to meet new people without someone having first run a background check on them.”  
“You know that that’s not normal right?” Carmilla asked looking rather shell-shocked.  
“I’m gathering an inkling.” Laura sat back in her seat and chewed thoughtfully. Carmilla almost wished that she would ramble more instead of looking so sad.  
“College is about new experiences. Hopefully yours will be a good one and we run into each other at some point.” she offered and immediately felt better when a goofy smile returned to Laura’s face. She was definitely going soft in her old age.  
“Maybe.” the tiny blonde girl replied and Carmilla felt herself almost smile back.


	24. Librarians

"Hey, Laura. Do you know where I can find some of your older Greek texts?" Asked Carmilla, a regular in the Silas Library. As usual Laura was stumped by the question, combined with the older woman's incredible good looks. Carmilla came in almost every other day, looking for some new, rare book to read, usually in another language. Laura was always impressed and she always had to ask JP for help.

"I'll get right on that for you." She replied with a smile.

"Thanks." Carmilla said, and she had to think about how she wasn't going to smile back at the adorable human with a smile that could light up a city. 

"Hey, JP, did you hear all of that?" She asked the computer with that same smile and it reminded Carmilla that she wasn't special and she stop kidding herself. Laura was just bein good to a loyal customer.

"Okay, we keep all of the older stuff in the bottom floor, it's still four in the afternoon so it should still be safe, just don't take too long. We wouldn't want my favorite customer to die down there, would we?"  
She asked and Carmilla saw all of the blood rush to the girl's face at once and couldn't help but smile back.

" No, we definitely wouldn't want that. I'll be back in a minute, cutie." She replied with a wink and sauntered down into the basement.

"Worst-crush-ever!" Laura complained to JP, the human being who had been sucked into the library computer system at some point.

"Understandable." He typed out across the screen. 

"That was rhetorical, JP."

"Oh..."

Laura waited far past her shift and into the night with a copy of Interview With a Vampire until she fell asleep on top of one of the tables. When she woke up she wasn't in her room anymore.

"Sorry, Creampuff, but no matter what I did you wouldn't wake up, so I brought you to my room." Carmilla explained.

"You carried me here?" She asked groggily.

"Don't sound so surprised. I'm quite strong and you're quite tiny so it worked out well." Carmilla explained.

“Somehow, I’m not surprised at all...vampire.” Laura said cheekily, much to Carmilla’s surprise.

“How did you know?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“You ask for very old texts, and then talk about them as if you knew the men who wrote them. Which you probably did. You aren’t afraid to go down into the basement at all hours of the night, which by the way, is the only time you come. Your skin is perfect and your manner of speaking old fashioned. Also, I’ve seen you carry out five books that probably weigh more than I do in one duffel bag that with one hand. I’ve never seen you eat anything but you always have a bottle of something on you. That all points to vampire.” Laura announced as though Carmilla thought she were an idiot.

“Way to go, Lauronica Mars. Aren’t you afraid of me?” Carmilla asked, her eyes narrowing to slits and Laura no longer knew if the vampire wanted to eat her or eat her. 

“If you wanted to hurt me, you could’ve a while ago. The two of us are almost always the last two in the library. And then who would get your books for you?” Laura said, sitting back on Carmilla’s bed as though she were completely relaxed.

“Your heart rate says differently, Buttercup.” Carmilla chuckled.

“I’m alone in a room with a beautiful vampire who flirts with me every chance she gets. How is my heart rate supposed to look?”

“I’d say it’s appropriate. Unlike your rather obvious state of undress.”

“I’d say my state of undress is rather appropriate, unless you’d rather me put on some more clothes, vampire.” Laura’s legs swung out of the bed and Carmilla’s eyes widened. She had never thought of the tiny human as the flirty, bold type. She made a mental note to adjust her fantasies accordingly.

“Oh, please don’t.” for such a small person she had very long legs.

“That’s what I thought.” Laura’s grin didn’t match her tone of voice but the older woman definitely didn’t mind. That was the kind of grin that could light up whole towns on it’s own merit. 

“Well it’s not quite fair that you get to be half naked and I’m still fully dressed then is it?” Carmilla asked, quirking one eyebrow at the younger girl, playing the perfect part of the temptress.

“I guess not then. Would you like some help with that?” Laura asked, her voice dropping low and husky. Carmilla’s breath would have caught if she had any.

“I think that I can manage on my own thank you.” Carmilla’s own smoky voice husked back, still all the seductress. She slid her hands softly underneath her shirt and pulled it off incredibly slowly, slowly enough to get Laura started, she shifted uncomfortably her legs not doing enough to stem the pressure building between them.  
Carmilla’s stomach was flat and mildly toned, and Laura hoped that it was because she was a vampire and not because she was born that way, because that would be totally and completely unfair.


	25. Human Studies

"What do you do while I'm in class?" Laura asked when she came into the dorm room she and Carmilla shared after her Women's Studies course.

"People watch, read, and sleep usually." Carmilla answered, watching Laura's every movement. "I occasionally journal about what I see. People watching helps me to blend in with each generation, not to mention being more interesting than you would think. You can learn a lot."

"Maybe sometime you could take me with you?" Laura asked hopefully, her brown eyes looking up at Carm with all of the adoration in the world. The vampire's thoughts jumped back to their kiss, maybe two days before, after Danny and Kirsch had save her.

"Anything for you, Cupcake."  
At some point Laura had noticed a change in her roommate's behavior. Carmilla didn't sleep nearly as often as she had and when Laura left for class usually all she had to do was look around and she could pick her vampire out of the crowd like a dark guardian angel.

After everything that happened, the terrible, the ugly, and the wonderful, all that Laura could think about was that kiss. It replayed over and over in her mind, day and night, trying to figure out how to get it to happen again.

"Carm?" She asked when the older girl stood up abruptly. The vampiress stood close, very close to Laura so that they were nearly pressed together, chest to chest.

"I've been studying humans for many years. Learning to blend in with them and make myself indistinguishable from them. I have met hundreds of thousands of people, watched them pass by and fade in and out existence. Out of all of them I've found myself undeniably drawn to, attracted to you. You're the most wonderful, unique, stubborn, optimistic and beautiful person that I have ever met." Carmilla said slowly, her nose brushing Laura's shoulder, taking in her scent.

Laura had backed up against the desk, pinned between it and Carmilla. Gently, ever so gently, she reached up and wrapped her arms around her neck, pulling Carmilla down to her level. 

The vampire grinned mischievously before pressing even closer so that there was no room left between them at all. Her nose brushed the human's and Laura could feel Carmilla breathe her in again, and dismissed the habit as a part of her vampiric nature.

"I can hear your heartbeat, Cupcake." She commented.

"Mmh." 

"It's racing." Carmilla whispered.

"I bet it is. Now shut the hell up and kiss me already." Laura said frustratedly, grabbing a fistful of Carmilla's hair and dragging her mouth down to her own.

Even during their first kiss Laura had surprised Carmilla with her boldness and this was no exception. Carmilla was used to being the more dominant in these...situations, but somehow it was the blonde who was the first to initiate nearly everything.

She was the first to part the vampire's lips with her tongue and explore the inside of her mouth. (Carmilla was more than happy to oblige.) She was even more surprised when she felt a cold hand on her stomach, running over her ribs and making her shiver. She responded in kind up the back of Laura's shirt and running the tips of her fingers down her spine.

"Carm..." Laura whimpered breathily and at the sound of her nickname lifted her head and opened her eyes, her attention drawn away from the warmth she had pulled against her.

"Laura." She responded.

"Don't stop." 

Carmilla nipped at Laura's neck gently, a soft reminder of who and what she was, before kissing the same place. She stopped for half of a second when the smaller girl pulled off her shirt before Laura turned and pressed her against the desk now and Carmilla was torn between the kissing and the staring.

"Laura, hold up." 

Carmilla protested before grabbing her shoulders and holding her off long enough to pull her shirt and bra off in one skillful movement, effectively stunning Laura enough for Carmilla's eyes to drink in their full.

"Your bruises..." The human mumbled, her heart breaking over Carmilla's pain.

"I've had worse, love. I'm okay. It was worth it to have you here with me, safe, happy, and shirtless is more than I could've ever hoped for. You take my breath away." Carmilla approached prederatorily and slid the strap of Laura's bra down her smooth shoulders as Laura simply stared, her boldness melted away. She pressed a gentle kiss to Laura's lips and pulled away, each time Laura rose in her tiptoes to follow. 

"Too slow." Laura whispered and pushed Carmilla to the bed, not having the vampire's patience.

She thumbed Carmilla's nipple and pulled on her leather pants all at one time.

Carmilla's hips rose to take them off and pressed into Laura's center, barely brushing her but enough to have the desired effect. The human shuddered forcefully before leaning across her vampiress roommate, first taking her nipple gently as she palmed her breast and running her tongue across the top and brushing her mound with her thumb, eliciting a gasp of pleasure.

Carmilla had much more experience thank Laura did, 325 years more, yet the spunky girl still wasn't daunted. She massaged her thumbs against Laura's scalp as their noses brushed during one final kiss before Laura pressed downward, slinging her own jeans off. She tossed them across the small room and parted Carmilla's lower lips with her tongue, running it along each side, getting to know the vampire's body with each nuzzle.

Carmilla was still having trouble reminding herself to breathe, wondering why she hadn't realized that Laura owned some damn hot black panties. Her thoughts were hazy and fleeting in the face of Laura's mouth against her sex, surprisingly forceful just like everything else Laura had been showing her. 

She refused to give in to the urge to fist Laura's silky blonde hair in her hands the way she so desperately wanted to, just in case her strength got away from her, as the pressure inside built up, instead she stroked Laura's hair, face, shoulders, and back, massaging her as gently as her trembling hands could, trying to memorize how she felt.

Then came her climax her body locking up around Laura, her heels digging into the bed and her hands clenching the sheets, refusing to hurt the most important person in her life.

Laura let her ride it out, her thumbs stroking circles on Carmilla's inner thighs at the same pace Carm had been going on her shoulders.  
When it was over and the vampire had relaxed, Laura stretched out and pillowed her head on Carm's shoulder.

"Are you purring?" Laura asked in between soft, sleepy kisses, Carmilla sucking on her tongue and lower lip.

"Cat, 'member?" Carmilla asked.

"Right, right."

"Gimme a minute and you can have your turn, Sundance."

"I'm too comfy, keep purring." Laura kissed Carmilla's collarbone. "Maybe later."

Carmilla resumed her light rumble, pulling one of Laura's legs between her own, the vampire's arm wrapped around the human's waist her front pressed against Laura's back, her chin hooked over the human's shoulders.

"This is the kind of human studies I appreciate."


	26. Deck Hands

Deck Hands Hollstein (I recommend you read this while listening to Heaven by Live)

In honor of the honorable Captain, kbearluna

Laura had thrown up over the side of the ship, the LaFerry, thrice now and was getting really tired of Carmilla's teasing about it. At least her girlfriend was being a good broody, useless, gay vampire and holding her hair back for her. The Captain, Kaitlyn Alexander, had been a friend of Carmilla's in another life and was taking them on a free cruise as a favor for Reading Week. Laura was struggling with seasickness and Carmilla found it much too amusing for her taste.

"Stop giggling. This isn't funny, I'm miserable. You're supposed to feel sorry for me."  
She protested.

"I'm sorry, Cupcake. You're just too cute to do anything but tease you."  
Carmilla laughed.

"I'm throwing my guts up and you think I'm cute."  
Laura said in disbelief.

"You're cute no matter what you're doing, Creampuff."   
Carmilla said softly.

"I'd kiss you if I hadn't just thrown up again." Laura almost found it in her to smile.

\------------------------------------------------------------  
That evening, when Laura was feeling better Carmilla blindfolded her and took her to the top of the reserved observation deck and sat her down on the blanket she had had The Captain prepare. 

"Can I take this off now? It itches!" Laura complained.  
Carmilla plugged in the last of the twinkle lights and pulled the blindfold off herself once the pair of them were settled and comfortable.

"Oooh it's beautiful, Carm. I can't believe you did this for me!" Laura cooed as she looked around at the lights, the stars, and the pillows and blankets.

"Kaitlyn helped a lot. They get very invested in things like this." She replied modestly with a shrug and half smile.

"No, this is wonderful. Thank you, I love it and I love you." Laura said with a smile that shown brighter than any of the stars or twinkle lights.

For the rest of the night they laid back on the pillows, listened to music and Carmilla showed Laura all of her favorite constellations. It was fun and romantic and there was quite a lot of kissing involved between the names of stars that honestly Laura immediately forgot.


	27. Stars

Stars

“Laura! NOooo!” Carmilla shouted, her voice full of pain, desperation, and anger.

“Chill out, Carm. I’ve got two lives left.” Laura complained back.

“Still, Cupcake, it’s an unnecessary waste.” she replied in a calmer tone as her character fought with another character on the screen. “Be still, I still don’t understand why you feel that it’s necessary to sit like that.”

“ I’m comfortable.” Laura said petulantly. She was sitting on the small of Carmilla’s back in the floor in front of the TV, while Carmilla laid on her stomach. She kept fidgeting too, and her tailbone was digging in, yet somehow she loved the feeling of Laura’s added weight.

“Alright then, just watch your butt bone would you?” she said as she watched Laura’s character run off into what was obviously a trap.

“Laura, you’re going to die again.” Carmilla warned, “get back out here.”

“There’s probably treasure or something back here. Follow me.” she said excitedly, inciting more wiggling. Carmilla finally lost her patience and rolled Laura off of her, pinning the small girl to the ground.

“What was that for?” she asked with a pout.

“I asked nicely twice, Muffin.” Carmilla purred in what Laura called her sultry voice.

“Uh-oh. I’m in trouble.” Laura said with a wince, causing Carmilla to realize that the human was still playing her game. She had to wonder how long she could maintain focus while Carmilla was...distracting her. She started by sitting behind her and wrapping her arms around Laura’s waist. Once she was settled she slid her hands underneath her tank top, running her hands and nails across the smooth planes of Laura’s abdomen, making the girl squirm.

“Carmilla...what are you doing?” she asked.

“Nothing, keep playing, babe.” Carmilla chuckled as her hands trailed higher, running up and down her sides and tracing the outline of her breasts.

“Carmmmm…” she whined as her gameplay began to get worse as Carmilla trailed kisses down her jawline and to her claicvle. She really got bad when Carmila began to suck on Laura’s pulse point and her fingers started to play with the line of her panties.

“Carm, you’re going to make me lose.” Laura tried to strengthen her voice as she said this, but the waver in her voice gave her away.

“Somehow I don’t think that winning is really what you want right now, Creampuff.” Carmilla grinned wickedly and chuckled, as her own center began to heat up as well. 

When Carmilla locked her arm around Laura’s waist and slid her free hand down the back of Laura’s panties, the blonde threw the controller up and onto the couch without even pausing the game and turned in Carmilla’s lap, shoving her forcefully over to the the sounds of her charcter taking a serious beating. They ended up with Carmilla flat on her back, breathing heavily and Laura straddling her waist, her breathes coming in pants. Both just sat like that and stared for much too long before Laura’s center couldn’t handle it anymore and she pounced, one hand sliding up the vampire’s shirt, and the other traveling slowly south.

“You started this, now you get to finish it.” Laura ordered undoing the buttons on Carmilla’s leather pants.

“I am much more than willing.” she replied as the game in the background began to beep a warning.

“Mmmmhmmhm, good.” Laura cooed as Carmilla rolled them over to pin Laura to the floor as she began to rock her hips, enjoying Laura’s facial expressions as she started to get to work on getting Laura’s jeans off.

“Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather go save your game, babe?” Carmilla asked teasingly, dropping her hands.

“Put those back where they go.” Laura ordered, stopping her own ministrations to return Carmilla’s to her bare hips.

“As you wish.” she joked.

Carmilla teased Laura’s bottom lip with her teeth eliciting a moan that only made her hips rock faster. Now neither girl was wearing pants and Laura was just in her tank top.  
“Laura,” Carmilla whispered. “Your underwear are ruined.”

“That seems to happen a lot around you.” she responded and was proud of herself when her voice only broke twice.

“Just fuck me already.” Laura complained.

“Getting a little hasty there, aren’t we?” Carmilla teased Laura’s mound through the soaked panties.  
Laura responded with a strangled moan.

“Carm, bloody hell.” Laura actually bit down on Carmilla’s collar bone and the vampire gasped, the vampiric role reversal had always had an intense effect on her and somehow Laura always just knew though Carmila had never told her.

The character on screen finally died and Carmilla recited the exit line along with her, looking straight into her human’s eyes.  
“I hope when you look up at the stars, you know that they are all me in different lives tryinto find you.”

“Only you would manage to make this intensely romantic, you broody, useless...aaahhh.” Laura was rendered mute when Carmilla’s tongue found her opening, and well, entered.  
Laura had no idea how Carmilla had ever figured out how to do exactly whatever it was she was doing, but she guessed that at some point in the last three hundred years she had picked up a few things. Her thumb rubbed circles on Laura’s clit, Laura kissing whatever exposed skin she could find. Up until this point all of their sex had been soft, gentle, and loving. This was everything but. This was hard, rough, and fast, and somehow, still loving. Carmilla still managed to show with every movement, every word, and every curl of her fingers that Laura is and always will be the center of her universe.


	28. Alcohol and Waltzing

Blame It On the Alcohol and the Waltzing

Laura felt like a princess. Perry was just putting the finishing touches on her hair, which would probably have taken a lot less time if she had been able to stop bouncing up and down in her seat.

"I wonder what Carmilla will wear." She mused aloud for what was possibly the fifth time.

"I'm sure that it will be something in black." Was Perry's answer again.

"You say that like she doesn't look absolutely stunning in black." Laura scoffs, smoothing down her maroon dress.

"Done. Now let me put some makeup on that cheek pinchin' cute face of yours." Perry ordered, her navy blue dress making swooshing noises whenever she moved.

"Okay, then, what do you think LaFontaine will be wearing?" She asked as turned to face Perry. 

"A button-down shirt, short sleeves of course, a bow-tie and khaki pants. Maybe their glasses." Perry rattled off.

"Maybe Carm will wear red. She looks good in red too." Laura mused aloud again, not mentioning that Carmilla looks good in everything.  
"Keep this in your bra or something. It goes really well with your skin tone and dress. The others should be here soon to pick us up." Perry said, handing her a tune of lipstick. 

Laura's skin was flawless so she didn't really need much makeup at all, if any, so the two girls nervously sat on Laura's bed to wait for their dates.

Laura fidgeted and thought about how Carmilla had 'asked' her to the annual homecoming dance (complete with goat sacrifice). All of the students were expected to learn how to do at least basic ballroom and Laura had bullied her vampire into teaching her and her friends.  
\-----/////-----  
She had been wondering why Carmilla hadn't yet asked her to the dance or if she even planned on going. It was making her nervous. If Carmilla didn't know whether or notaura wanted to go, the dancing lessons should have been a very good hint.

Later that night after Laura had updated her blog and the pair was getting ready for bed, Carmilla was lying on her side on Laura's bed watching her change into her pajamas when she asked what color Laura's dress was.  
"Sort of purply-maroon. Why do you ask?" Laura asked, settling down next to her vampire. 

"Your feet are always so cold." Carmilla complains. "I'm thinking about your corsage."  
She says making Laura's face break out in a face splitting grin. 

"You're the best." She tells Carmilla and kisses her hard once before rolling over to face away from her vampire girlfriend. 

Carmilla chuckles and wraps an arm around Laura's waist and drags her closer, kissing her cheek before trying to go to sleep.  
\------/////-------  
Laura's thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Both girls shot up and off of the bed and smoothed down their dresses, before Perry opened the door to LaF and Carmilla.

"Hi." Laura squeaked when Carmilla came in and advanced prederatorily on her.

"You look ravishing, Cupcake." Carmilla said after giving her a couple of once overs.

"And you steal the show as usual." Laura said and for the first time Carmilla understood just how Laura felt under her vampiric gaze. Laura looked hungry. 

"Hello, LaFontaine. You look great." Perry said. 

"And you're just...whoa." LaF said with a laugh.

"Thanks." Perry replied and the pair simply stood there, staring unabashedly and blushing.

"Carmilla, are you okay? You sort of look like you're about to pass out."

"You're just...I'm not...I don't even know how to process how incredible you look." She stuttered and Laura smiled. She had never thought herself capable of rendering anyone as over the top attractive like Carmilla speechless.

"Now you know how I feel waking up to you every morning." Laura said, grabbing Carmilla's hand and using that momentum to get up high enough to kiss her cheek.  
"You guys ready?" Carmilla asked, as Laura took the oppurtunity to look her up and down again.

Carmilla was wearing a strapless red dress with a bodice styled like her black corset that stopped mid-thigh with a poofy skirt, and black heels. 

"Yeah." Replied Perry, otherwise occupied adjusting LaF's bow tie.  
\------//////-----  
"I'm glad that I had you to teach me now." Laura said as she and Carmillla waltzed, staring up at her vampire girlfriend with her adoring brown eyes.

"It's not that hard, you would've picked it up pretty quickly I'm sure." She replied, having trouble keeping a smitten grin off of her face.

"Still, why are we like the only people dancing?" Laura asked.

"Only the four of us came to my 'class' and you are enjoying this way too much. Can we go get punch or something?" Carmilla asked, suddenly uncomfortable with the number of eyes she could feel on her. 

"Sure, I wonder if it's been spiked?" Laura asked.

"Oh, it's definitely been spiked." Carmilla Said nefariously.

"Oh, come on! You didn't!?" Laura scolded.

"I didn't. I just saw Ginger One do it." Carmilla reassured her. "I've gotten 23 degrees from this school, trust me the punch is always spiked." She laughed.

"Thank you for doing this, Carm. I know this stuff probably isn't all that important to you, but it was to me, so thank you, even though I know it wasn’t for me, so thank you, Carmilla, for this dance.” Lara told her, and Carmilla nearly teared up.

“Come on, love. You know that I wouldn’t. I do these things because I enjoy seeing you enjoy them. You happy, equals me happy, Shortcake.” Carmilla explained, while staring at the ceiling. Laura rose up on her tiptoes and kissed Carmilla, right there in the middle of the dance hall.

“I love you, Carmilla.” Laura confessed, right in the middle of the school dance next to the punch table, staring up with naked adoration into her vampire’s eyes.

“I love you too, Cupcake. More than I thought would ever be possible for a centuries old, broken vampire. You gave my life some light again.” she responded, reaching closer to Laura to tuck some blonde-brown hair behind her ear. Laura was backed up against one of the columns and Carmilla had turned on the seduction eyes.

“I just wants some punch, Carm. Not PDA.” Laura hissed, despite the fact that she had already snaked her arms around her vampire’s neck.

“Your mouth and your body are saying some very different things, Creampuff.” Carmilla whispered into her ear, soft lips brushing her skin.

“Shut up and kiss me.” she whispered back, putting her glass down.

“That dress is giving me palpitations and I don’t even hae a heart beat.” Carmilla whispered back, teasing Laura’s pulse point with her nose and teeth.

“Stop that and kiss me.” the human whined.

“Say please.”

“Pretty please, sugar on top.” she said immediately.

Finally, graciously, Carmilla kissed Laura, oh-so-softly, as though Laura might break if she wasn’t gentle enough.

“Want to get out of here?” Laura asked.

“People will wonder…” Carmilla said, pretending to only consider the thought.

“Blame it on the alcohol and the waltzing.” Laura said with a shrug. “That was basically sex in 1698.”

A stunning grin broke out across Carmilla’s face and she grabbed her girlfriend’s hand before dragging her back to their room. 

“Ten bucks, Perr.” LaF chuckles, holding out her hand.


	29. Giants and Elves

Giants and Elves Giants and Elves

“Carmilla! Stop calling me Shorty, and Shortcake! You’re not that much taller than me? You’re what? 5’3?” Danny can call me that, she’s a literal foot taller than me.” Laura protested.

“I can call you anything that she is allowed to call you.” Carmilla said in a voice that was more like a hiss than anything else at this point.

“Why do you insist on calling me anything but my name anyway?” the human girl asked.

“The names are sweet things and you’re a sweet kid.” Carmilla chuckled.

“I am not a kid. I am 19 freaking years old, and trust me, I have more life experience than even a vampire like you could imagine for a teenager.” she shouted. “Now, go clean up your half of the room.” She ordered.

Carmilla choked back a laugh and went about picking her dirty clothes off of the floor, still trying not to smirk.

“Short people, always so sensitive.” commented Danny Lawrence as she strolled into the room.

“At least I’m not a giant.” Laura grumbled.

“At least we aren’t elves.” Carmilla repudiated, this actually getting a snort out of Danny.

“No, no, no, no, you two can’t actually start getting along. I wouldn’t survive.” Laura protests.

“I just stopped by to give you these notes for your Lit. class.” Danny said, laying them on the counter before she had to leave.

“Don’t tease her badly, Wednesday.”

“Watch out for stray arrows, Arwen.”

“Thank you, Carm, for making an effort to get along with my friends. It means a lot to me.” Laura said after Danny was gone.

“They’re not so bad after a while.” Carmilla grumbled, abandoning her half-hearted cleaning to collapse on her bed with a book.

“Good enough for me.” Laura said, setting her TARDIS of cocoa on Carmilla’s headboard and lying down beside of her.  
Carmilla blushed, this was the closest that they had ever physically been together (she kept track), and Laura had only found out that she was a vampire like two days ago and she didn’t quite know what to do with all of the feelings that she was having.

“I am inexplicably exhausted.” Laura continued and Carmilla just knew that if she still had a heartbeat, it would be racing. Laura rolled over and put her head on Carmilla’s shoulder nad was soon fast asleep. The vampiress took the opportunity to inhale that distinctly Laura smell and kiss the top of her head.


	30. Picnic

Picnic  
“Laura, Laura, Laura! Wake up, you’re having a nightmare, love. Laura…” Carmilla shakes her girlfriend’s shoulder a little.  
“Hah!” Laura shouted as she shot up awake.  
“Laura,...are you okay?” Carmilla asks, Laura’s arms clinging to her, desperately, her own heart would have been beating quickly from Laura’s fright alone.  
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Thank you.” She mumbles, but by the grip she had on Carmilla’s shirt, the vampire could tell she was lying.  
“Tell me about the dream,” Carmilla suggested. “ Saying it all out loud helps.”  
“I was lying on my bed at home, and something was crushing me, I couldn’t see what it was and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Laura murmured, feeling ridiculous and childish. Carmilla just nodded in response, and kissed the top of Laura’s head over and over, whispering encouraging words until the human’s heart rate evened out and returned to normal.  
“Are you good, now?” Carmilla asked, sliding out from underneath Laura, much to the blonde’s chagrin. She never felt as safe as she did when Carmilla's arms were around her.   
The vampire snatched a blanket off of her no longer used bed and spread it out on the floor. She went to their mini kitchen fridge and grabbed out some of Laura’s favorite snacks and some hot chocolate.  
“C’mere, Cupcake. Join me.” she said, patting the blankets and pillows beside of her.  
Laura smiles softly, her brown eyes shining as she sits down in front of Carmilla and lets herself relax into her strong arms.  
“A midnight indoor picnic? You’re going soft, my badass vampire.” she whispers.  
“For you, I’m willing to occasionally turn in my badass card.” Carmilla replies with that comforting rumble in her chest that Laura equated to purring.  
Carmilla kissed Laura’s exposed shoulder and enjoyed the feeling of being needed.


	31. Gender Swap

Strange things had happened at Silas University to the point that it was actually quite common to see mushrooms up and walking around campus. Carmilla Karnstein had seen more than the normal students. She was a vampire and had been around Silas once every twenty years for the past few centuries to kidnap girls for her mother. This took the cake though and might have been the strangest thing Carmilla had ever seen. Laura, her girlfriend of the past few months, was sitting on her bed and was a dude. Laura had become a guy after breathing in some sort of chemical that the Alchemy Club had designed. No one (except maybe LaFontaine) understood exactly what had caused the change, but now Laura was just sitting on the bed staring at herself in a handheld mirror, or not really herself, but the guy version of herself.  
“Laura, stop that. We’re going to get you fixed.” Carmilla scolded.  
“I don’t even believe that this is me now. How do I...I can’t...I’m scared, Carm.” Laura admitted and Carmilla was scared that Laura might cry. She hadn’t experienced a crying Laura before.  
“There’s no reason for you to be scared, Cupcake. We’ve got one of the brightest minds on campus searching for a fix. It’ll all be good. You make a halfway decent guy. you’re going to need to shave soon though. I’m not sure I’ll be able to kiss you if you’re all scruffy looking.  
“You would still love me? If I was stuck this way?” Laura asked, looking rather confused.  
Carmilla’s face creased in confusion. She didn’t quite understand the question.  
“Of course I would. I don’t understand the question.” Carmilla said.   
“I just thought...if I was a guy, that you wouldn’t want me anymore.” Laura mumbled.  
“I guess that we haven’t ever had the sexuality talk before, have we?” Carmilla asked, sitting down on the bed across from Laura. Her jaw was more square now and her nose was wider, her brow more wide set. Somehow, Laura was still everything Carmilla had seen in her. Laura was still brave, strong, and stubborn with that unnamable quality in her brown eyes that said that all she wanted was the truth in a given situation.   
"Laura, I'm not the sort of person who falls in love with a gender, or how someone looks on the outside. I love you because of who you are, Sweetpea. Not because of what you look like." Carmilla murmured back to her, edging closer to her ... Boyfriend?  
"I'd still rather go back to normal, though. I much prefer being a girl." Laura said as Carmilla wrapped an arm around her.   
"We could call you Laurence." Carmilla joked, earning her a whack on the arm.   
"Let's go get Laf to fix you up." She added, pulling Laura up till she was standing.   
"We might need to find you some clothes too."


	32. Body Swap

I woke up and immediately knew that something was wrong. My sense of smell was immediately much weaker and I felt softer and smaller and...more alive. Not to mention that I was on the complete opposite side of the room. Knowing the college that I attended, I immediately placed the blame on the Alchemy Club. I looked across the room, expecting to see Laura, peacefully unaware of whatever strangeness I was experiencing. The only thing that I saw...was myself. This was when I almost began to panic. Looking down I discovered that I was definitely not in my own body. I was in Laura’s. I had read crappy sci-fi novels about these sorts of occurrences and assumed that Laura’s consciousness was in my old body.  
“Laura…” I hissed to my irritating human roommate. At least she used to be human, now she was undead, like I had been. I desperately wanted to spare her the torture of being a vampire, despite how she agitated me, and needed to figure out a solution to this mess. I hadn’t realized that I slept with my mouth open like that.  
“Laura!” I tried a bit more loudly and finally she rolled over a little, and fell with a satisfying plop onto the floor  
“Don’t freak out, but it appears that we have swapped bodies. You’re a vampire now and…”  
“You smell bloody delicious.” she mutters. “I’m a who-what now?” Laura asks making her bunched up angry/confused face that I found adorable before I could help myself.  
“I know I smell delicious. This is how you smell everyday. Look at me, Laura. I’m you and you’re me.”  
“I figured that out. We need LaFontaine. Before you go anywhere though you need to do something about my hair.”  
I had to give the no longer so tiny human some credit. Her mind had immediately skipped five steps ahead into the planning before I had the chance to start actually attempting to convince her that what I had said was true. It’s also possible that she had much too much faith in her everyday person. There was every chance that I wasn’t actually Carmilla.

I attempted to avert my eyes as I got Laura’s body dressed, but that curiosity and pull that i had been holding back since I became her roommate got the better of my socialite upbringing. She had a much firmer abdomen than I had initially suspected and well formed bone structure. If I had to become trapped within anyone’s form, I was glad that it was this one, though the idea of living a short human life terrified me. I had to wonder about what Laura might be thinking as her eyes couldn’t help but graze over my own vampiristic form.

Laura was using all of the training her father had given her to stop herself from freaking the hell out. When she looked across the room she could she herself sitting in that same position that Carmilla always did in her bed. When she looked in the mirror all she could see was the smooth expanse of Carmilla’s pale skin as she changed clothes.  
“Laura, are you alright?” Laura heard her own voice come out of her body’s mouth. It was extremely confusing but somehow Carmilla , in her body, looked completely calm.  
“I’m fine, really, just thinking.” she said and grimaced as she took some of Carmilla’s clothes into the bathroom to change. Changing clothes turned out to be an interesting experience. Carmilla had always been completely comfortable just standing in the middle of the room and stripping, but even in the other girl’s body she just couldn’t handle it. Somehow the expanse of skin triggered something primal in Laura this time and her heart began to beat harder against the inside of her chest. It almost felt like if she weren’t careful it would bust all of the way through to the outside of her body. It wasn’t like she hadn’t ever seen a naked girl before, but somehow this seemed to be different. Maybe it was because she was inside of the body in question, or maybe the fact that she had always been so attracted to Carmilla.  
“You alright, Creampuff?” Carmilla asked again.  
“I’m a vampire, Carm. There’s not much that could be wrong with me.”  
“You know what I mean.”  
“How very unlike you to be so worried.”  
“That’s my body you’re in. Who knows what kind of trouble you would get me into.”  
Understandable. Laura thought.  
“And that goes double for you.”  
"Seriously, Cupcake. I'm surprised that you're not freaking out. You woke up this morning in my body just like I woke up in yours. Even I'm a little disturbed." Carmilla pushed.  
"If I thought that freaking out would be at all helpful then I'll do that." Laura snarked at her and finally Carmilla could see what she was looking for in her own body. Even without her enhanced vampire senses Laura's body language spoke volumes. Laura gnawed on her bottom lip and crossed her arms tightly over her chest.   
Carmilla stood and crossed the small room to where she saw her own body leaning against the desk in a manner so completely not her own. "Come on, Sugarplum. It'll all be alright. Let's go get the Ginger Twins to set us right." she murmured to Laura and brushed a lock of her own black hair behind her own ear the same way she would have, looking at Laura, if they were in their usual respective forms.   
"Okay." She responded weakly, making no move to stand up.   
"Or I could bring them to you."  
"Okay." She answered with an equal lack of enthusiasm.  
"Or I could stay for a while and then fetch them."   
"That would be preferable." Laura replied, finally looking up at who seemed to be herself, but also just as obviously wasn't. The way Carmilla stood made it obvious that whoever was in Laura's body wasn't Laura.  
"What do you want to do then?" Carmilla asked, wanting to do something, anything, to help Laura out with the insane situation.   
"Maybe if we nap, everything will go back to normal when we wake up." She suggested, though neither of them actually thought it would work.   
"That's actually a halfway decent idea, Creampuff." Carmilla lied, climbing into Laura's bed as Laura climbed into hers. They shut out the lights and settled in, the room going uncomfortably quiet. An hour later Carmilla still wasn't asleep, though she was faking it rather well. A creak on the floors alerted her to movement, but she just assumed that it was Laura needing to use the bathroom. A rustle in her blankets made plain that this wasn't the case though. A larger warm body settled in next to her and an arm wrapped around her waist. Carmilla blushed red and she marveled at the fact that in this human body she could do that. She hadn't blushed in centuries.   
Covertly she attempted to snuggle in closer and sighed contentedly. Finally she drifted off to sleep, her eyes too heavy to hold open anymore.   
"Wake up, love, and look at me." Carmilla said, poking a still sleeping Laura whose blonde hair was spread out across Carmilla's chest and on her face.   
"What? Carm,wuz going on?" She asked sleepily.   
"I'm me and you're you again! Though we were both technically still ourselves because what makes us us is our mind and the accumulation of memories and experiences."  
"You talk a lot, did you know that?" Laura asked getting an unfamiliar glazed over look in her eyes. Carmilla was immediately suspicious of the strange look, wondering if it might be a latent affect of the body swap.   
"Why hello, Pot. I'm Kettle." She said sarcastically.   
"Oh, shut up, you." Laura said with an eye roll before basically pouncing on the vampiress and pressing their lips together.   
"If rambling for a bit was all it took then..." Carmilla started.  
"Less talking, more kissing." Laura ordered. Carmilla decided that she liked this side of the small blonde human and complied.


	33. Oceans

Ocean (Catmilla)

"Come on, Carm. I really want you to come with me." Laura pleaded from inside of the bathroom.

"I'm a cat, therefore not a big fan of the water, Sweetpea." Carmilla protested from her seat perched on the hotel bed she had been sharing with Laura.

"Neither is Perry. Just sit under the umbrella with her and relax." Laura suggested, her words muffled by the hair tie clenched between her teeth.

"Whoa." Was all Carnilla had to say when Laura stepped out of the bathroom in nothing but the blue bikini. "I'll come, just never wear anything but that ever again...whoa." She reiterated.

"Geez, this isn't even the skimpy one." Laura teased.

"I don't even have a bathing suit." Carmilla said triumphantly, thinking that she'd much rather stay in the hotel room and get Laura out of the bikini.

"That's a non-issue. I bought you two of them. In black of course." Laura announced happily, despite her face reddening from Carmilla's intense seduction eyes.

"Here we are." Laura said as she pulled the black two piece out of the bag, the kind that doesn't wrap around but is connected by the two black rings on the hips.

Carmilla grinned wickedly as Laura pulled a coverup on over her suit  
.  
"If you play nicely. I'll let you put my sunscreen on for me." Laura teased some more as Carm took the bikini into the bathroom to change.

"You say that like it would be such a hardship for you, Cupcake." She teased right back. They continued to banter until Carmilla was done changing. 

"Okay, okay. Just tell me I don't look too ridiculous." She said as she stepped out of the bathroom.

"You look, wow."

"Ya know, I think I've heard that phrase somewhere before." Carmilla laughed. The black cloth matched her hair and contrasted with her vampire's porcelain skin in an amazing way. 

"Breathe, Creampuff, breathe." Carmilla reminded her. 

"Right, yeah, here." Laura coughed and passed her a shift styled cover-up.

"You ready to go then, vampire?" She asked.

"I go where you go, human." Carmilla replied, catching Laura's hips as she opened the door, kissing her soundly on the mouth before closing the still open door with her foot before they could go through it.

"Just to warn away any beach prowlers." Carmilla says, a thigh pressing between Laura's legs to pin her the door. Laura moaned and Carmilla's fangs exposed themselves.

A flash of fear and excitement flashed through Laura's blood, triggered as usual by the way Carmilla's eyes had gone darker and softer than they ever did in public. Her tongue lazed out between the fangs and traced Laura's collarbone, directly below the twin scars marking Carmilla's possession of this human. Now, she would mark her I a way even the humans would understand.  
"Nnmmh." Was Laura's only offering of protest as her fingers interlaced in the long black locks of hair and pulled her still closer, her other hand's blunt fingernails taking down Carmilla's backs

"There, I bet they'll leave you alone now." She proclaimed, wiping her thumb over the forming bruise on Laura's pulse point.

"Mmmhm, yep, that'll do it, yeah." Laura mumbles, still waiting until her knees were capable of holding her up on their own. 

Gently, she pulled Carmilla's face down so that she could connect their mouths.

"There." She said breathing heavily. "Now we can go." She said cheerily. She swept out of the room, giggling when Carmilla groaned and slouched against the door and followed.

 

On the beach, Carmilla relaxed on the blanket with Perry, watching LaF and Laura play in the water and build sandcastles. The sun, even though they were in the shade, , was wonderfully warm and eventually she simply transformed into her cat form and napped while Perry stroked her back.

"Carmilla, wake up! Something's going on." Perry whisper yelled at her, shaking her until she popped back into human form. 

"No, go into Panther mode that'll scare them off." Perry fussed.

"Not when I'm dealing with humans. What's going on?" Carmilla asked, scanning the area for her person.

"Those guys won't leave Laura alone and I'm pretty sure LaFontaine is going to get themself beaten up again. Go and do something about it, you useless vampire." Perry ordered. 

"Fine. I'll go handle it. Stay here." Carmilla said, putting on her big, floppy sun hat and walked out to where the human boys were messing with her human and her human's best friend.

"What's up, Laura?" She asked calmly and casually. 

"Carm..." Laura sighed in relief. 

"OOOHHH, you're hot. We were just trying to get the shorty hottie here, to come and join in our wet tshirt contest. Maybe you could come too." The taller and more muscular of the two offered as he eyeballed her up and down in a way that made her skin crawl.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that my girlfriend said no and now you two are just pestering my friends."

"Carmilla..." Laura whispered as the boys cracked their knuckles.

"Leave them alone and be on your way. Your generation understands nothing of how to talk to a lady." She said in her most threatening vampire tone.

"You're not turning me down though, are you Shorty? It's okay, I've always wanted a lesbian." The only slightly less huge guy asked Laura and Carmilla was afraid that everyone would be able to hear her blood boiling.

"She's said 'no' four times now, dick-for-brains." Protested LaFontaine.

"Maybe we could have a threesome." The big one suggested.

"That's enough!" Laura yelled and kicked the guy in the family jewels before single handedly handing the two men their asses, driving them down to their knees.

"That's my girl." Carmilla chuckled watching the fiesty little blonde break bones, while standing back and restraining LaF with one hand.

"Stop being such damn bullies! When a girl says no, she means no. I have a girlfriend for Tennant's sake." She explained as they held themselves and moaned on the ground.

"I think they've had enough, Creampuff." Carmilla told her.  
"Scram." She hissed at the beach prowlers and let them feel enough of her vampiric aura to send them running.  
Laura immediately wilted slightly and returned to Carmilla and LaF, melting into the arm Carmilla wrapped around her shoulders.

"Why didn't you let me help?" LaF argued, still looking for a fight, their face red and fists clenched.

"Laura didn't need it. She needed to prove that she doesn't need protecting." Carmilla explained.

"You did well, Buttercup. I think it's time we headed back." 

"Agreed." Said LaFontaine.

 

When Laura stepped out of the shower, she nearly stepped on the panther relaxing on her bath mat.

 

" Carmilla! You've got to stop materializing into locked rooms!" Laura scolded, rushing to wrap herself in a fluffy and white towel.

Carmilla responded by licking her upper thigh with a rough, sandpaper, Panther tongue, before returning to her human form, leaning against the double sink counter, naked.

"Thank you, for the back-up earlier. I don't know if I would have been able to handle those idiots without you there." Laura said, running a hand through her wet hair.

"Honey, the whole point of me not biting their heads off for even thinking of looking at you in such a manner as they had been was for you to prove that you could handle a situation like that as you did. You are so much stronger than you think, love." Carmilla said honestly, trying very hard to remain serious as Laura stood there in nothing but a loosely wrapped towel. Somehow, even though more skin was showing in the bikini, this was possibly the most attractive she had ever seen Laura.  
"Thank you, anyway, Carmilla." She said with a shrug, stepping forward and kissing her, one hand burying itself in her hair as Carmilla placed one hand gently on Laura's hip and one hand cupping her neck.

 

"I love you." Laura whispered.  
"Not nearly as much as I love you." Carmilla responded, her grip on Laura tightening as she pulled her ever closer. They had only been a 'real' couple for a few weeks and the Vampiress was very careful and respectful of how slow Laura might want to take the physical aspect of the relationship and always watched for boundaries. This was why she was very surprised when her little human very purposefully and very slowly dropped the towel that severed as the only boundary between the two.

Carmilla's skin began to tingle when Laura's hands began exploring her body and tugging for the lacy shift to come off.   
Laura's mouth latched on the mirror spot of where Carmilla had left her mark on her collarbone. She had to reach up so far on he tiptoes that it almost made the three hundred year old vampire laugh as she lifted Laura up. With her super human strength it was as though the younger girl weighed nothing. Her legs automatically locked around Carmilla's waist and her arm folded around her neck as Carmilla let out a hoarse moan, her neck tilted back and red lips slightly parted to reveal the tip of a pearly white fang. Carmilla had never before seen Laura's eyes that dilated.  
"I love you." She murmured into the vampire's ,her vampire's neck.  
"334 years of existence, and you're the first girl to have ever said that to me." She whispered back, lining Laura's jaw with kisses.  
"Really? That seems highly unlikely." Laura protested. Carmilla pulled back (but only a little) and looked straight on into Laura's honey golden brown eyes.  
"Here me clearly on this one Laura, I will never again lie to you." Carmilla promised.  
"Understood." Laura nods as Carmilla backs her up to the kitchen counter and kisses her way down the human's chest, lingering here and there on her ribs or hips.  
"You've made a mess on the counter, love." Carmilla teased, interweaving the fingers of one of each of their hands together. All Laura could do was mumble incoherently in response. Carmilla chuckled darkly and Laura felt that thrill rush down her spine again, the one that said she wasn't sure if she was going to get eaten or get eaten. The. She was rendered incapable of thought by Carmilla's tongue on her inner thigh. An open mouthed kiss was placed right below her belly-button before the Vampiress took her for her for herself right there on the kitchen counter, overlooking the ocean.


	34. 21st Century

Welcome to the 21 Century

"Carmilla, have you seen this?" Laura asked from her usual spot at the computer. 

"Sweetheart, you know that I neither understand nor care about those screens your generation seems to be so taken with." Carmilla replied without looking up from her book.

"You know how I told you that people who don't go to Silas don't believe that my videos are from real life?" Laura asked.

"Yes, you said that they're convinced that it's some sort of television show."

"Exactly, well there is this thing people do called shipping. It's when you want two people to end up in a relationship of some variety - " Laura was cut off when Carmilla interrupted her saying

"LaFontaine has explained this to me before."

"Oh, okay, good. Well, apparently we've become a big deal on Tumblr. We're called Hollstein and we've got fanfiction and fan art and everything. Perry and LaFontaine are called LaFerry. I've been reading Hollistein fanfiction for the past two hours. Some of it is actually really smutty." Laura said with a blush. 

"I need to see this." Carmilla proclaimed, shooting straight up on the bed she had been relaxing on.

"I thought that you didn't understand and didn't care?" Laura asked teasingly. "Give me your phone and I'll download the app for you."

"Is that really necessary? Don't they make paper copies?"

"Welcome to the 21s century, Carm."


	35. Hot Chocolate and Gingerbread

Hot Chocolate and Gingerbread 

"Cupcake, I thought you were done with gingerbread forever." Carmilla said as she strolled into their dorm room and noticed a plate of the cookies occupying the desk beside of her. 

"I'm trying to associate them with something besides witches and murderous townspeople and almost dying." Laura responded without looking up from her computer.

Carmilla tossed her bag onto Laura's bed, stole the yellow pillow off of it, and collapsed onto her own bed, burying her face in the pillow.

"I thought that was a good day." She commented.

"You would. You're starting to enjoy all of this heroic vampiress crap, aren't you, Carm?" Laura asked, turning in her swivel chair to face her girlfriend and roommate, a piece of gingerbread still half sticking out of her mouth.

"When this is my reward? Always." Carmilla said, leaning across the foot of the bed and turning on her classic seduction eyes.  
Laura's throat bobbed as she dry swallowed.   
She caught a flash of fangs as Carmilla's teeth closed around the gingerbread man's leg still a hair's breadth away from her lips.

Carmilla leaned back against the Laura smelling yellow pillow again, taking her time enjoying her girlfriend's reaction and flustered expression.

"Oh, that's so not fair." Laura protested and Carmilla could hear the distinct sound of the younger girl's pulse racing.

"Get back to work. I'll make you some hot chocolate." Carmilla told her with a light laugh. Laura pouted and took another bite of gingerbread, before turning back to the computer. Carmilla set the chocolate beside of the little human and kissed the place on Laura's neck from the one time she had fed from her. If it hadn't been for her enhanced senses she'd have missed the very satisfying shiver she elicited.


	36. Gentlewoman

“Whoa.” Laura sighed after they had parted, her hands on Carmilla’s back and the vampire’s hands cupping her cheeks.

“I know.” Carmilla replies with a large grin. “I would like to take this opportunity to formally ask your permission in allowing me to court you.” Carmilla asked in that old fashioned manner she had sometimes.

“And I’ll formally reply with a resounding yes, now do that again, I think that I might like this kissing thing.” Laura murmured, leaning in.

“Wait, what?” Carmilla asked, her brow furrowing. “Don’t tell me that that was your first kiss. Please don’t tell me that that was your first kiss. Please.” she sat down on the bed hard. Laura was surprised to see that her new girlfriend looked absolutely and totally heartbroken.

“I would be lying.” Laura sat down beside of her and took her hand, lacing their fingers together.

“Oh, God.” her voice laced with pain, both physical and mental.

“You sound like I just murdered your puppy.” Laura asked worriedly, brushing some soft black hair from carmilla’s bruised but beautiful face.

“I’m not good enough for you, Cupcake. You should be with a human like yourself, someone who’ll adore you like Danny does, not that I don’t, you’re the only light I’ve managed to find in this dark, precocious world. You need someone light like you are, not a broken and beaten vampire with mommy issues.” Carmilla mourned. She didn’t want to give up the love of her very long life, but was thoroughly convinced that this was the best thing for Laura.

“I should’ve stayed in my hole. Hell, I should’ve stayed in my coffin.” Carmilla murmured, more to herself than to Laura.

“Oh shut the hell up you broody, useless, vampire!” Laura yelled suddenly, the coffin comment stealing her last straw.

“Yes, you stole my first, second, third, and fourth kisses. One of those also being my first french kiss. Get over it! It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t wanted it to! And trust me, I wanted it to.” Laura reassured her.

“But, I -”

“Stop, Carm. we both know that I love you and that you love me so just give up and accept that you’re my girlfriend and deal with it.” Laura announced.

“And I expect there to be a lot more of this kissing thing going on, so you had better get your vampiric ass adjusted to that as well.” She suggested, sitting back down much closer to Carmilla.

“I don’t think that that will be an issue, Buttercup.” Carmilla smiled softly, still not looking completely convinced.

“You only said that because you want what’s best for me, right?” Laura asked. “Carmilla Karnstein, you’re what’s best for me and when or if the time comes that you aren’t I swear that you will be the first to know.” Laura snuggled even closer. “Somehow I doubt that that will ever happen though. I don’t see how you could be bad for anyone unless you were very hungry or they were trying to hurt one of us.” Laura laid her head on Carmilla’s shoulder for a pregnant moment. “You’ve had a rough couple of weeks, I’ll go warm you up some blood and we can take a nap, okay?” Laura asked, noticing that Carmilla’s eyes were drooping.

“Let’s skip straight to the sleeping part, Creampuff.” Carmilla suggested, grabbing her by the shoulders and dragging her down with her as she laid down, Laura ending up splayed out over the vampiress, their faces mere centimeters apart.  
Laura slid an arm under her waist and rose up to kiss Carmilla once more.

“As your first girlfriend ever, we’re going to take this slow, alright?” Carmilla said, wanting to give Laura enough time to back out if she wanted to before things got serious between them. Laura laid down across her vampire’s body, doing her best not to hurt her. (Carmilla had no idea how serious things already were.)


	37. Elevator Trope

"Laura, for Pete's sake! I don't understand how you manage to always get yourself in these situations?! It's not natural!" Carmilla fussed as she pushed her girlfriend's wheelchair into the elevator.

"They were trying to steal her purse, Carm! What was I supposed to do?!" Laura protested.

"Wait for me!" Was Carmilla's immediate answer. Adrenaline still poured through her veins as she remember the feelings of seeing Laura's crumpled body lying in the snow as it gradually turned red.

"I don't need you to take care of me!" Laura shouted.

"You obviously do! Which one of us is getting checked out of the hospital right now? The correct answer is, not me!" Carmilla stomped her foot to accent her point and the elevator suddenly jerked to a halt.

"Great, now look at what you've done." Laura huffed. "We're stuck in here."

"I'm not the one picking fights with muggers, Laura! You scared the fucking shit out of me." Carmilla finally admits.

 

"I'm sorry, I should have thought about how worried you would be before jumping into something that I wasn't sure I could handle." Laura apologizes.

"Maybe I shouldn't trust you to protect me all the time." Laura stands and puts her arms around Carmilla's neck. 

"At least give me the time to get to you and help you." Carmilla replies, her hands on Laura's hips, both holding her closer and making sure she stayed on her feet.

"I'm sorry." Laura repeated when she finally noticed the dried tear tracks on the vampire's face.

"Me too." Carm murmurs, burying her nose in Laura's hair and neck.

"I don't like fighting." Laura says.

"Me either." Carmilla gently brushes the wheelchair out of the way with her foot and turned so her back was to the elevator door. She cradled the smaller girl against her, hating that Laura was seeing her so vulnerable. She suddenly felt Laura's cold small hands under her chin, tilting her head up to look at her as Laura pressed their mouths together. Laura was warm against Carmilla's perpetually cold body. She was supposed to be a centuries old badass - not some sparkly wimp who cried every time the girl they like bled a little.

"You care about me, Carm. It's okay to be worried. It doesn't mean that you're weak it means that you're just as in love with me as I am with you." Laura tells her with a small smile. 

"I do, you know...love you." Carmilla says.

 

"Yeah, I do know that." Laura answers, barely aware that they were still in the elevator. She was pressing Carmilla harder and harder against the elevator doors, their mouths locked together and hands searching for something or anything on the others body. Carmilla's hands left trails of cold fire against Laura's skin and she forgot about the pain she was in more and more with each touch.

"How long, exactly, do you think that we'll be stuck in here?" The vampire asks nervously. "I'm not a fan of tight spaces."

"I've got no idea. We've only been in here for a second. Talk about it, what about this is scaring you?" Laura asks as she settles back into her wheelchair much to Carmilla's disappointment. 

"I feel like the walls are closing in on me and all of the air is leaking out of the room." Carmilla murmurs.

"Because of the coffin?" The tiny human asked gently. Carmilla only nods in response.

"You were alone in the coffin. You aren't alone now, Carmilla. You've got me and I'm going to be here for as long as you want me."


	38. Teachers HSAU

Laura was trying very hard to stop staring across the hall at the very attractive history teacher. Ms. Karnstein was new to the school having started in the middle of the semester.  
She was just a smidgen taller than Laura (then again everyone is) with dark hair and pale skin. According to the students Laura had attempted to interrogate, she was a good teacher, though a bit scary. 

"Ms.Hollis? Ms.Hollis! You're spacing out again!" Complained one of her tenth graders in the front row.

"Right, sorry, back to our lessons."

\--/////--

"Hey, Laura. Have you met the new history teacher, yet? She's supposed to be ridiculously..." LaFontaine started as they sat down next to the small blonde teacher who was trying not to faceplant into her horrible school-issue mashed potatoes. 

"LaF, no gossiping. It's unbecoming and a bad example for the kids." Scolded Perry.

"You wouldn't say that if you had seen her." Laura muttered, pulling surprised looks from the biology and home ec teachers.

"Has someone finally caught our little girl's eye, Perr? Is that possible after Danny?" LaFontaine teased.

"I do believe that it could be. I never thought I would see the day." Perry looked equally amazed, making Laura blush.

"Shut up. She's coming over here." Laura hissed as she saw the familiar raven-hair bobbing through the sea of teenagers.  
Perry and LaFontaine dissolved into giggles.

“Hey, Ms. Karnstein, why don’t you sit with us today?” offered Perry politely as LaF grinned like a Cheshire cat. Laura practically growled at her best friends, though she couldn’t help watching the new teacher’s movements. She moved languidly, almost catlike in her fluidity. 

"It's just Carmilla, thank you." She replied as she sat down in between Perry and Laura.

“I’m LaFontaine, while I do have a first name, I hate it. I teach bio for the freshmen and anatomy for the juniors and seniors. This is my girlfriend, Lola Perry. Most people just call her Perry though.” LaFontaine introduced themselves and Perry.

“I teach home ec and chemistry.” she added.  
“HI-I’m Laura Hollis. AP LANG , Shakespeare, American Literature, and Journalism. I’m also the mentor for the school’s newspaper. The three of us also run the school’s GSA.” she rambled. 

“Oh, and just call me Laura. I’m across the hall from you.” Now she wanted to potato herself more than ever.

“You’re just cheek pinching’ cute aren’t you?” Carmilla asked teasingly, lifting one of her perfect eyebrows. Laura blushed again and wished that it were socially acceptable to just go ahead and hide underneath the table.

"If your face goes any more red, I'm afraid that you might just explode." LaFontaine laughed. 

"Eight years, LaF. Eight years old." Laura said in a threatening tone, lifting a hand to swipe some long blonde hair out of her face and Carmilla couldn't help but notice that they were the lightest shade of brown she had ever seen. All she could think of was caramel and the sun mixed together. Then again she always made things much more philosophical than was completely necessary.

"What does she mean by eight years?" Carmilla asked Perry as Laura argues with the other red head like kids.

"Laura was right when she started taking Krav Maga lessons. Her dad is a raging paranoid. Sometimes she teaches self defense lessons after school. One time Danny Lawrence surprised her when she was locking up and Laura broke her collarbone and sprained her shoulder. She's had a crush on her ever since." Perry explained, watching her best friends with a gentle kind of expression that coaxed a rare grin out of Carmilla.

"So, Carmilla, what brought you here to Silas High?" Laura asked, once she and LaFontaine had settled down. 

"The principal asked me to take the job as a favor to her, and who am I to argue with my mother when she asks me for something." Carmilla said in her wispy way, but Laura for some reason felt that there was something deeper than that to Carmilla's story. Then again, maybe it was just that intense wanting feeling Laura was facing to find out more about this new person.   
\-----/////-----  
Carmilla Karnstein was a hit with the students. All Laura heard from her kids was how great they thought Ms. Karnstein was. All of the teenage girls wanted to be her and when the boys didn't think Laura could hear them they talked about how hot they thought she was. She couldn't help, but silently agreed.

Carmilla, on the other hand, had just discovered the window she could look across the hall through see into Laura's classroom. She had noticed at lunch that Laura was almost intolerably adorable, but from afar she took on more layered aspects. Unlike Laura, Carmilla functioned breezily as a teacher even while her eyes never left Laura's practically glowing person. 

"Ms. Karnstein?" Asked one of her girls after class was dismissed. 

"Yeah, Abby?" She asked as she joined the girl who was for some reason still at her desk. She sat on top of the desk, though she had repeatedly told her students to not do the exact same thing. 

"Um, if you don't mind, may I ask you a personal question? There's just some stuff going on at home that I don't quite know how to deal with. And you're the only person around here that I really feel like I can talk to." Abby murmured. Carmilla could already tell that this was going to be one of those 'Big Deal' conversations.

"Sure, anything you need, sweetheart." She replied gently. 

Abby word-vomited her entire story out to Carmilla in one fell swoop. Luckily, it wasn't anything too serious though she was sure that it all felt like the end of the world to a teenaged girl. Abby's parents were getting a divorce and she was absolutely terrified of moving. 

"I'm actually from Eastern Europe, I completely understand being afraid of moving. I was little though, so I eventually lost my accent, but I remember how hard it was to make friends. Don't worry though, you're a great girl and I'm sure everyone will warm up to you eventually. In the long-run everything will be okay." Carmilla tried to reassure her. Being comforting wasn't something she was used to. She was even more surprised that when she stood up to let Abby leave, the teenager rushed up and hugged her. She squeezed Carmilla tightly for just a few seconds, before rushing out the door without another word. 

"Hey, Carmilla. Is everything okay with Abby? She's never exactly been the touchy-feely kind of kid." Laura asked, stepping out of her classroom looking ready to be done with her day.

"She's fine, or at least she will be. Apparently her parents are getting a divorce and she freaked out by the idea of moving. She just wanted some advice." Carmilla explained. "The whole 'emotions' thing isn't my forte." 

"It looked like you did pretty well to me, Ms.Karnstein. In my opinion this is one of the hardest aspects of our jobs, having to build that emotional connection to the students, only to lose them the next year." Laura said sadly.

"I've never really thought of it that way." Carmilla murmured thoughtfully.

"You should come out to dinner with me...us. Perry, LaFontaine, and I make a sort of ritual out of going out to eat together every Monday night. Makes them a lot less sucky." Laura rambled again and blushed in that adorable way that made Carmilla smile. Laura was quickly realizing that that grin was the cause of her escalating heartbeat over the past few weeks. 

"I'd love to, Cupcake." Carmilla replied and Laura grinned back, her whole lighting up.

\-----/////------

Soon Carmilla became a part of Laura's routine, though her grin still made Laura's heart do funny things in her chest. She always say with Laura and company at lunch and did her best to come to most of the Monday dinners. Sometimes she would even come over to Laura's little apartment afterwards to grade papers together....those were Laura's favorite days.

“Oh my gosh, you’d think these kids were sleeping through my class except for the one or two.” Carmilla complained.

“Those one or two kids are the reason I show up everyday.” Laura agreed. “But don’t worry I happen to know that your kids love you. At the least the ones that I’ve heard from.” she reassured him.

“I understand, it’s just that i wish i could do more for them.” Carmilla said softly, worried that she might be saying too much.

“Ditto.” Laura said and Carmilla almost grinned at the childish term.

\-----/////-----

“Carm! You forgot your jacket at my place last night!” Laura called from her classroom doorway when she saw the history teacher come in, unaware of the clique closing in, watching and listening.

“Oh, thanks, Creampuff. I hadn’t even realized I didn’t have it anymore.” Carmilla said with a smile.

“No problem.” Laura said, completely lost in the eye-sex they were totally having. It wasn’t until Abby cleared her throat to ask to be let into the classroom that Laura broke the eye contact and stepped aside with a blush.

“See you at dinner?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course. Until lunchtime then.” Carmilla replied, very glad that her vampiric constitution didn’t allow for blushing.

As soon as Laura was back inside of her classroom she slumped against the door and sighed, momentarily forgetting about her students.

“So, are you two finally a thing?” Abby asked.

“No, we aren’t, not that it is any of y’all’s business.” Laura said with a blush as she strode to the front of the classroom.

“Then, are you seeing Coach Lawrence?” asked Elizabeth from the back about their gym coach and health teacher, Danny Lawrence.

“No way, Coach is with Kirsch.”

“Explain, to me, what exactly is up with you and Ms.Karnstein. You two obviously belong together. You’ll be the next LaFerry.” Abby asked with an eyeroll

“What’s a LaFerry?” Laura asked, so enthralled by this side of the student subculture that she had been unaware of that she was completely forgetting the lessons for the day. 

“LaFontaine and Perry together make LaFerry. It’s their ship name.” Abby explained.

“Okaaaaay, then.” Laura said.

“You see, Sam, Gemma, and I want you and Ms. Karnstein to end up together. Elizabeth, Jacklyn, and John want you and Coach Danny to end up together.

“And together you guys have thought all of this stuff through, huh?” Laura asked in a mixture of amazement and amusement.

“What if Ms.Karnstein and I don’t feel that way about each other?” she asked saucily.

“You do, though.” Abby argued.

“And how do you know that, young lady?” Laura asked as though she didn’t quite believe her student. Mostly though she was worried that her crush was waaaaaay too obvious. 

“You lean towards each other in social situations, you stare at each other through your windows constantly and spend the majority of your free time outside of school together. Seriously, it’s really very obvious.” Abby stated matter-of-factly.

“You’ve gotten cheekier since you got Karnstein as a teacher, Miss.Paley.” Laura said with her eyes narrowing.

“I might have to have a chat with her on the subject.” Abby paled and sat back in her seat. Laura was halfway to her door when she heard a knock. When she slipped out, Carmilla was waiting for her.

“Did you students just ambush you?” The history teacher asked.

“Big time. How are we going to handle this? Do we report it to the administration?” Laura asked.

“I don’t think it’s that big a deal. Anyway, is the idea of dating me, really that very terrible?” Carmilla asked teasingly, but was surprised by how badly she wanted to know the answer.

“It’s not a terrible idea at all.” Laura murmured.

“Really?”

“Yeah, in fact, it might even be a halfway decent idea.” Laura responded her breath catching her chest as Carmilla stepped into her personal space.

“Really?”

“mmmhmmm.” Carmilla took Laura’s speechlessness a consent or a sign form the gods and pulled her in by the waist and the nape of the neck and kissed her chastely in the middle of the school hallway. Even just that mere contact was enough to send Laura into a tailspin and she murmured, making Carmilla smile that small grin that had drawn Laura to her in the first place.

“Laura...later.” Carmilla whispered.

\-----//////------  
“Well, that went well.” Laura said, still blushing, when she re-entered her classroom.

“Oh no, am I in trouble?” Abby asked.

“No, you’re not.” Laura said with a very shy smile.


	39. Damn Leather Pants

Carmilla hated those damn leather pants with a burning fiery passion and had for once, decided against wearing them to class. She had lived for hundreds of years and knew all of the trends. The leather pants got her the attention the most quickly. Now, with the Dean gone, (or mostly gone), it was time that she came out of the 'these-awful-constricting-uncomfortable-pants-have-got-to-go' closet. Today she had worn a black v-neck t-shirt, and black jeans. Admittedly, she had gotten a few surprised looks from her philosophy classmates, but none were disapproving. 

Now, she headed back to the dorm-room she shared with Laura, whom she recently had decided fell under the category of girlfriend. With her vampiric hearing on alert, she stood outside of their door for a moment, taking in the sounds of Laura, who, from what Carmilla was hearing, was playing dress up. Not wanting to disturb the blonde's flow as she jammed out to her iPod, the vampiress focused for a few moments and dematerialized. Her entire person melted into a fog, before silently appearing on her bed completely unnoticed by Laura. 

"Now, of course not. That's just the way the world works, cuuuutie." Laura announced to the supposedly empty room. Carmilla stifled a laugh, but was also mildly turned on by Laura wearing those damn leather pants and the extra away she added to her hips as she walked away.

Laura stepped into their shared closet and tugged off her tank top in favor of Carmilla's white button up. The vampire sucked in a breath at the sight of Laura's extra exposed tan skin, the music playing through the buds in the blonde's ears blocking her from catching on. She tucked in the shirt and tied a tie expertly on as well. Softly she sang along with Thinking Out Loud. She checked her reflection in the mirror and closed her eyes dancing to the change in song. Carmilla was surprised to find that she knew and liked it. 

"Come on get higher, loosen my lips..." Laura sang.

"Faith and desire in the swing of your hips." Carmilla joined in from behind, making Laura jump and shriek adorably.

"This isn't what it looks like." She insists. 

"I know what you're doing and I don't mind. It all looks better on you anyways." Carmilla reassures her. "Now, go back to whatever you were doing. Start the song over." She requests, coming up behind the smaller girl and putting her hands on her hips so that they danced slowly together. 

"How long have you been watching me?" Laura asks, turning in Carmilla's arms as she allowed herself to be led gently around the room. 

"Almost ten minutes." 

"And you don't think it's weird that I do this sometimes?" 

"Oh, it's definitely weird, but it's also hot and I don't mind." Carmilla playfully nips at Laura's ear. "Do you touch yourself in my pants, Cupcake?" 

"I love it when you dance with me." Laura admits, ignoring the question.

"And I love you, stop avoiding the question." Carmilla ran her hand along the crotch of the jeans, making Laura tremble. The smaller girl blew out a light breath, pressing herself up closer to the older girl.

"Well I wasn't fucking spiders." 

"Want to show me how you do it?" She whispers to Laura. Carmilla picks up Laura's hand from the girl's waist and guides it into her waistband as they continued swaying completely in sync with one another. With her other free hand, the vampire began to work on the laces of the leather pants. 

"Talk me through it?" Carmilla requested. "What do you do first?" Her hand followed Laura's guiding a finger from each of them in.


	40. Running Away from a Teacher

Okay, so maybe taping poppers to the bottom of the toilet seat was going a bit far. Carmilla had to admit. 

I didn't even get the teacher I wanted. 

Her goal had been to prank her mother but she had gotten Mrs. Hawley instead. Hawley was a bitch too, however so she didn't feel too guilty about it. Now, she was running down the hallways of her high school, yards ahead of the older woman, trying to figure a way out of the sticky situation before she was caught. She already had detentions lined up for the next two weeks. She ducked quickly into the space between the vending machines when she heard another set of feet coming from the opposite hallway, though at a much slower pace than either her own or Hawley's. 

"Carmilla?" Asked Laura Hollis as she approached the machine, her hall pass in one hand and a dollar in the other. "What are you doing?" The tiny girl asked.

"Hiding, and you are about to give me away. So, hopefully you'll be understanding when I do this." Carmilla proclaimed, spinning them so that Laura was pressed against the machine, gripping her face and kissing her, their bodies pressed flush together l, a very successful disguise of either girls' identities. 

She was very surprised to find the younger girl kissing her back, and she was good, too. Everyone knew that Laura Hollis, a sophomore to Carmilla's senior, was the inherently good kid. She definitely wasn't the kind of girl you would expect to find pressed up against a vending machine by the school bad girl, Carmilla Karnstein. Hell, the older girl hadn't expected her to even be receptive of the advance, but now she was taking the lead, one hand twisted into her long black locks of hair, as the other ran up and down her side and dragged blunt nails down her abdomen. 

Carmilla nearly melted into a puddle on the floor then and there, but instead responded by pinning her closer to the machine with her hips. The clicking of Hawley's heels faded away, accompanied by a disgusted huff. The unlikely pair began to slow then, the kisses becoming less hurried and hungry, and more languid and exploratory. The notorious badass had never expected this kind of explosive chemistry. She doubted that Laura had expected any of this either. At some point Carmilla's body had curled all of the way around Laura's, her arm wrapped around her neck and her fingers massaging into that soft place where her school met her neck.

Carmilla broke away for a moment, leaning her forehead against Laura's as they gasped in one another's air. Clearly not ready for it to be over, Laura reconnected their lips for one more soft kiss before they split for the last time. Carmilla continues to lean into Laura, not allowing her up. Still just enjoying the contact, and cupping her cheek, she stroked Laura's cheekbone with her thumb and admired the girl in the new light she was seeing her in. 

"Whoa..." Laura sighed, looking up and meeting Carmilla's eyes, turned so dark that they were nearly black. 

"Yeah..." Carmilla sighed back before burying her nose in Laura's hair and pulling her in, kissing her softly one more time. 

"We should do this again sometime." Laura suggests, breathless and red-faced. 

Carmilla agrees readily, slipping her hand boldly around Laura and drawing her cell phone from her pocket and putting her number into it without ever backing away from the smaller girl.


	41. Getting A Laugh

Okay, so maybe taping poppers to the bottom of the toilet seat was going a bit far. Carmilla had to admit. 

I didn't even get the teacher I wanted. 

Her goal had been to prank her mother but she had gotten Mrs. Hawley instead. Hawley was a bitch too, however so she didn't feel too guilty about it. Now, she was running down the hallways of her high school, yards ahead of the older woman, trying to figure a way out of the sticky situation before she was caught. She already had detentions lined up for the next two weeks. She ducked quickly into the space between the vending machines when she heard another set of feet coming from the opposite hallway, though at a much slower pace than either her own or Hawley's. 

"Carmilla?" Asked Laura Hollis as she approached the machine, her hall pass in one hand and a dollar in the other. "What are you doing?" The tiny girl asked.

"Hiding, and you are about to give me away. So, hopefully you'll be understanding when I do this." Carmilla proclaimed, spinning them so that Laura was pressed against the machine, gripping her face and kissing her, their bodies pressed flush together l, a very successful disguise of either girls' identities. 

She was very surprised to find the younger girl kissing her back, and she was good, too. Everyone knew that Laura Hollis, a sophomore to Carmilla's senior, was the inherently good kid. She definitely wasn't the kind of girl you would expect to find pressed up against a vending machine by the school bad girl, Carmilla Karnstein. Hell, the older girl hadn't expected her to even be receptive of the advance, but now she was taking the lead, one hand twisted into her long black locks of hair, as the other ran up and down her side and dragged blunt nails down her abdomen. 

Carmilla nearly melted into a puddle on the floor then and there, but instead responded by pinning her closer to the machine with her hips. The clicking of Hawley's heels faded away, accompanied by a disgusted huff. The unlikely pair began to slow then, the kisses becoming less hurried and hungry, and more languid and exploratory. The notorious badass had never expected this kind of explosive chemistry. She doubted that Laura had expected any of this either. At some point Carmilla's body had curled all of the way around Laura's, her arm wrapped around her neck and her fingers massaging into that soft place where her school met her neck.

Carmilla broke away for a moment, leaning her forehead against Laura's as they gasped in one another's air. Clearly not ready for it to be over, Laura reconnected their lips for one more soft kiss before they split for the last time. Carmilla continues to lean into Laura, not allowing her up. Still just enjoying the contact, and cupping her cheek, she stroked Laura's cheekbone with her thumb and admired the girl in the new light she was seeing her in. 

"Whoa..." Laura sighed, looking up and meeting Carmilla's eyes, turned so dark that they were nearly black. 

"Yeah..." Carmilla sighed back before burying her nose in Laura's hair and pulling her in, kissing her softly one more time. 

"We should do this again sometime." Laura suggests, breathless and red-faced. 

Carmilla agrees readily, slipping her hand boldly around Laura and drawing her cell phone from her pocket and putting her number into it without ever backing away from the smaller girl.


	42. Haunted House AU

Ever since the Battle of the Lustig Building, Carmilla had been jumpy about things getting too close to Laura (whether they were actual threats or not). She had come much too close to losing someone she cared about to the Lophiiformes again, and by extension the Dean, her mother. Not to mention having almost been lost herself l. That wasn't very pleasant either, she had to admit. Still, it was Laura that made her jumpy. 

Despite all of this, Laura still thought that it would be a good idea for the two of them to hit up the local fair, and along with it, the haunted house. Carmilla had found herself incapable of saying 'no' to her tiny girlfriend, especially when she pulled that pouty face out on her. The night had been great up until that point. The pair had ridden every roller coaster, played all sorts of the rigged games (made much more fair by Carmilla's vampire-ness), and Laura had ingested enough sugary food to feed the entire population of Honduras. 

Even as they were just entering the first dark hall, Carmilla began to tense up, the sounds and close quarters grating on her nerves. Still, she forced herself to relax, not wanting Laura to know that it bothered her. She constantly had to remind herself that there were no real threats. With her vampiric hearing she could hear the screams and laughter of the people enjoying the carnival, and smell the corndogs, cotton candy, and hot dogs from the cheesy vendors' stalls.

 

The first few feet were composed of different scenes from popular horror or particularly freaky sci-fi. It featured Frankenstein and his monster, a crazed clown, Jason, Chucky, and of course, a vampire. It was a very stereotypical vamp, he wore the long cape and ruffled shirt and stood poised to bite over some innocent girl, blood already running down his chin. 

"Tch! Is this all we are to these puny humans?" Carmilla scoffed, making Laura laugh at how personally she was taking it. 

 

"I'm a puny human and I know the truth. Does that count for something?" Laura asked with a blinding smile that automatically set the real vampiress at ease. 

"That counts for everything, pumpkin." Carmilla replied before pressing a kiss to Laura's temple. They continued down the haunted hall at a leisurely pace with a much more relaxed Carmilla. Her senses remained on high alert, just so she wouldn't overreact to anything and possibly hurt someone on accident. Laura thoroughly enjoyed the Hall of Mirrors, much to Carmilla's amusement, despite the lack of her own reflection. 

"Come on, Shortcake. I know that you could be entertained by this for hours, but I can hear how badly you need to pee. Let's get moving." Carmilla chided, making the younger girl blush. Laura tucked herself into Carmilla's side and hurries along beside of her. 

"I thought that you couldn't hear those sorts of things unless you were trying to." Laura says as they near the exit. 

"I kept my senses on alert through the maze so that I could differ between the attraction and a true threat. I trend towards the paranoid in situations that concern you." Carmilla admitted, her grip on Laura's hand still tight. 

"If you didn't want to do it, you should have told me." Laura scolds her.

"I don't want to be the one holding you back from doing something that you enjoy, Cupcake." Carmilla replies as she finally releases a sigh of relief outside of the 'house'.

 

"I enjoy being around you, and I enjoy seeing you enjoy yourself too. That's what's important to me. You aren't holding me back from anything if it's not something we both will like." Laura tells her as she allows Carmilla to lead her own.

"You're the sweetest. Now, go use the bathroom before your bladder explodes." Carmilla laughs, kissing Laura once and sending her on her way.


	43. Nature Reversal

I was documenting my most recent discoveries in the case of the missing roommate when she came in.  
"Who the hell are you?" I ask automatically confused as to why this tiny blonde stranger and just barged into my room and made herself comfortable on Betty's bed.   
"Oh, sorry, you were so quiet that I didn't notice you. I'm Laura Hollis. Your new roommate." She explained and I had to notice that she was kind of adorable in a bright, shiny, and sparkly kind of way.  
"I have a roommate, she's just missing at the moment." I object.   
"Seeing as I have nowhere else to go. I'll just stay here until she's less missing then." Laura says. "Now, if you don't mind telling me your name?"  
"I'm Carmilla." I say, not knowing how to deal with this intruder.   
"Carmilla...very late 1600s" she comments as though she had been there. "My chocolate milk is off limits." 

"So you're a vampire, huh?" Carmilla asked out of the blue one day as she laid on her stomach watching the tiny blonde girl.

"Wha- what could you possibly mean by that?" Laura stuttered, totally giving herself away. 

"You - vampire, me - Jane." Carmilla laughed, pointing first at Laura and then to herself.

"Of course I'm not a vampire. Where wouldn't I get an idea like that? You must think I'm an idiot! Your odd hours, super strength, and 'protein slurry'? Really, Laura? I'm not stupid." Carmilla scoffed with a grin.

"And if in fact I were a vampire, why wouldn't I have eaten you?" Laura asked, raising one eye brow.

"You like me. Obviously." Carmilla sing-songed. 

"I am 334 years old and you think I'm sparing your life because I LIKE you?" Laura asked, incredulous at Carmilla's blatancy.

"Well...yes, and LaFontaine agrees."

"So, you're saying that because my best friend of the century says that I like you?" 

"I've got my own theories...just not the chance to test them out." Carmilla said and the vampire was shocked by the teenager's confidence.

"You're the single most...unique...human I've ever had the pleasure of not draining of blood." 

"And you liiiiiike me." Carmilla teased with a grin.

"I wouldn't say such things if I were you." Laura threatened. Carmilla always knew she was serious when she made that adorable bunched up face and started talking like she had just popped out of The Princess Bride.

"You only say that because it's true." Carmilla knew that she was pushing at the border of some sort of vague boundary now but, then again, she had always been one for busting the envelope.

"I said that I wouldn't say such things if I were you. you never know where it'll lead you." Laura's eyes had gone dark and Carmilla's heart was thudding hard against her chest. She began to wonder if maybe this time she had gone too far. This wasn't some newly out out innocent little girl in high school. She was messing with a super strong, super fast, super everything vampire who had been alive for centuries and centuries and was more than capable of snapping her in half like a twig. Laura had drawn closer and was all up in her personal space. Carmilla no longer knew how this was going to go down...hopefully that was the right direction.

"Well...I, uh..." she stuttered.  
"Shut the hell up. You talk waaayy too much for a philosophy major."   
Laura's mouth covered Carmilla's and presses her back against her desk, on of Laura's thighs pressing against Carm's center and her hands cupping the human's cheeks.


	44. Coming Out

Laura Hollis had always been a very active participant in her classes. Carmilla Karnstein had not.

Laura was percieved as naive and a little nerdy by most of her peers. Carmilla was not.

Laura looked to be as straight as Westboro Baptist church member. Carmilla often publically hit on her female classmates in the midst of an ongoing class.

Despite these things this was shaping up to be the single hottest cat fight of the century in the minds of all who witnessed it.

“SHE WAS A LESBIAN.” Carmilla shouted from two rows down and a fistful of seats across from where Laura always sat during her history class.

“That was never proven.” Laura ground out as she attempted to maintain her chill. This argument had been going on for nearly five minutes, she had to wonder why the class’ professor hadn’t yet put an end to their bickering yet. However, she didn’t dare glance over at him. Taking her eyes off of her opponent could possibly be misconstrued as a sign of weakness.

“She and Hick probably did the do on a nightly basis. Eleanor had a Boston Marriage.” Carmilla scoffs as though she and the reporter had once been on a first name basis.

“I sincerely doubt that. Definitely not when in the public eye.” Laura says, looking taken aback but not at all put off by the fact that she was currently under the scrutiny of her entire class. In fact, Carmilla was beginning to think that she was enjoying the attention. Laura Hollis was never really someone that she had payed that much attention to. The tiny girl had just easily blended in with the rest of the eager, doe eyed student body. The older girl was about to decide that she was someone worth keeping an eye on with that inner fire she was rocking out and about during their little versus. First she wanted to see how she handled a little more pressure.

“Do you have something against gays, Hollis? Because that’s the only thing I can see that can be blocking your view of the glaringly obvious.” she asks, only to see Laura’s face go pale and then very very red with what could only be rage.

“I have nothing against homosexuality or lesbians seeing as how I am a lesbian, you asshole. And how would you know about ANYTHING going on behind the Roosevelts’ closed doors?” Laura finally yelled, that last comment really getting underneath her skin.

Carmilla had honestly not expected her question to end with the tiny gay outing herself. She wouldn’t have asked that particular question had she known. However, she hadn’t and she did, and now she was angry with herself and the situation. So, she did the only thing she knew to get the class off of Laura’s back with their immediate interrogation.

“I know because I was there, Cupcake.” she answers lowly, and the looks she got in return were nearly on par with the stunned expressions that had been given to Neil Armstrong upon his return from the moon.

“What could you possibly mean?” the professor asks, finally intruding upon the conversation as her bun began to fall down from the intensity of her gaze being shifted to each side of the verbal tennis match that had been being conducted in her lecture.

“I mean exactly what I said. I was there. I know about Ellie and Hicks’ relationship because she told me about it. We were close friends for a while.” Carmilla says with a shrug as the classroom begins to settle. She returns to her seat and the rest of the students follow suit, never taking their eyes off of her for fear of missing something. All of them except for Laura who’s mouth was literally hanging open.

“Explain.” Carmilla’s roommate orders.

“I am a vampire. I knew Eleanor Roosevelt because I am an immortal, undead, creature of the night.”

“I guess that I’m not the only one that came out today."


	45. Tippy Toes

Laura was renowned for many things. People knew her as ‘that girl from the web video’ or ‘Danny’s crush’. People knew her as ‘the vampire’s girlfriend’. Less commonly, she was know as ‘LaFontaine’s best friend’, or ‘the one who worries the floor don.’ Generally a given person on campus would recognize her somehow. However, a stranger’s first impression generally went along the lines of ‘dang, she’s short.’ Laura was aware of the fact that she was vertically challenged, it was pretty hard to miss.

Carmilla, on the other hand, had never seen her that way. Carmilla saw Laura as beautiful, independant, fierce, maybe a little naive at times, but never as small. Laura was big in the best ways. Laura was fervently alive. Laura was larger than life, and to the vampire, Laura was, in fact, everything. But, for the first time, Carmilla was forced to see that her human lover was maybe a little short.

The vampire had come home grumpy, but now she was laughing so hard that she was on the verge of tears, something that Laura had yet to witness until this point. “I cannot believe that that just happened.” she guffaws.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t, Cupcake. That’s what makes it amazing.”

“Shut up, you useless gay vampire.” Laura grumbles.

“You say that as though it were a bad thing.” Carmilla replies with that smirk that always affected Laura down to her core.

“It’s not.” she puts her arms around Carmilla’s shoulders to give herself a little boost, raising up to be level with the vampiress.

“Well, then. Aren’t you a forward little thing. Standing up on your tippy toes like you don’t know what you’re getting into.” Carmilla murmurs into Laura’s neck, taking in a deep breath through her nose, before glancing up and going in for a searing kiss.


	46. Tiny Sick Gay Laura

A constant diet of only cookies and grape soda had finally caught up to Laura Hollis.

"I don't understand it, I never get sick." She complained to her vampiric girlfriend, Carmilla between coughs and sneezes. 

"I know, that's something that I've never understood myself. It's supernatural, really." Carmilla scoffed, though she remained on the other side of the small dorm room from where Laura laid in her sickbed, where the tiny gay was watching Doctor Who and littering the floor with soiled tissues. 

"Carm, can you get sick?" Laura paused her show to ask.

"Not with any human diseases. There are illnesses that can affect vampires but you would never have heard of them." She answered, turning to glare out of the window. 

"Why are you all the way over there then, instead of over here, where you would make me feel better?" Laura asks. 

"You're sick. This isn't the time for me to ravish you, sweetling." Carmilla smirks, finally feeling like she could tease Laura without breaking her in this fragile state.

"I have a cold, I'm not dying. Come and hold me while I attempt to stay awake and watch the Daleks exterminate." She pats the bed beside of her with a poor imitation of the monotone robot voice.

 

"You're going to die one day." Carmilla mumbles, sliding under the covers smoothly.

"Maybe." Laura replies, her face going red.

"Maybe." The vampire replies, one arm serving as pillow and the rest of her body turned so that she could lean against the little human, her face buried in Laura's hair and shoulder, completely content to let those worries rest for another day.


	47. Fake Your Death

"Carmilla FUCKING Karnstein!" An angry voice shouted from across the room. Already, the reunion was going better than previously expected. No one had charged at the vampiress with a stake yet. Though, from the expression on the young journalists face, that could change any minute now. 

"Yea, Cupcake? You seem angry." Carmilla asked, seeming much more nonchalant than she was feeling. 

"Who wouldn't be angry, you ate all of my cereal and pretended to be dead for three years?!" She shouts back her face red, her chest heaving, and her small hands balled up into fists as she advances upon the vampire. Carmilla couldn't help but wonder if the woman might actually achieve spontaneous combustion purely from the amount of rage and other emotions filling up her tiny gay body. In response she set the empty cereal box on the counter and opened up her arms to Laura. 

"Come here."

A strangled sob escaped the back of Laura's throat and she ran into Carmilla's embrace immediately melting into the surprising warmth of the familiar body.

"I missed you." She cried.

"I know." Carmilla murmured soothingly.

"You owe me Captain Crunch."

"Yeah." Carmilla nearly laughed, and held Laura tighter against her.


	48. Underwear

"Alright Hollis, I'm going to need you to put on some underwear before we can finish this conversation." Carmilla said in what was nearly a stutter as her tiny human girlfriend advanced on her. 

"'Conversation' implies that you have a choice in the matter." Laura scoffs still sitting straight up in bed, her hair still in post-sex mode, completely naked.

"You wouldn't force me..." Carmilla chokes on her words at the end of the sentence, knowing full well that if Laura felt like she had to, the little human would do whatever she had to. 

"It's what I want. I want to be with you forever. I want the whole deal. The murder, the bite, the bloodlust. I want it all before we run out of time. I want you." Laura's voice is very near pleading.

"What if I don't want that guilt? What if I don't want to go on with the knowledge that I am the one who took your bright light from your world, tainted it, and dragged you down to my level?" Carmilla asked, the weight of years and years worth of painstaking consideration heavy in her voice. 

"I will find somebody else to do it for you." Laura replies as though she had the solution to every question she knew Carmilla to have.

"I would still be the reason. There is guilt enough in that." Carmilla says pensively, no longer capable of looking Laura in the eye. 

"There is no guilt in saving my life, is there? If the reasons were that I love you and know that you would mope around for centuries after I had passed? If the reasons were that I wanted to be with you that much, that I want to be with you until the end of our undeath or to the ends of eternity?"

Carmilla whipped her pain glazed eyes to Laura, whose keen gaze detected the pink tint to irises such a dark brown that they were nearly black. 

"You amaze me." The vampire murmured, falling back against Laura so that her dark hair splayed against the sheet that was all that covered her tiny human's nakedness. 

 

"I consider amazing you to be my full time job."

"I'm going to have to think about this." Carmilla mumbled, looking up through thick lashes to study Laura's face.

"I know. I just want it to be something we could discuss."


	49. Catch That Cat

"LaF! Help me!" Laura shouts as she runs past the redhead going the opposite direction from them in the dorm hallway.

"What now, Laura?!" They groan as they spin on their heel and run to follow her. 

"Catch that cat! It stole my wallet!" Laura instructs, good natured anger playfully scrawled across her face. 

"It's much too late for your late 17th century weird courtship rituals. I'm going to bed. Later losers." LaF chuckles when Catmilla turns and hisses at them, wallet clenched in strong jaws. 

“It’s not a courtship ritual,she stole my wallet!” Laura screeches as she rounds a corner, almost slamming face first into Danny’s boobs. “Sorry!” she shouts over her shoulder, chasing Carmilla who was laughing hysterically on the inside. She follows behind as fast as she could make herself run until the large black cat turned a corner and they ended up outside underneath a large pine tree. When Laura finally caught up Carmilla was back in her human form sitting on a lower branch, wallet in hand. She throws it to Laura casually, who catches it in both hands against her chest, panting heavily.

“Sorry about all of that. I just wanted to get you out here.” Carmilla admits, hopping down and grabbing a basket from behind the tree and spreading out a blanket.

“Are you for real, right now?” Laura asks, with a faux scowl. “You couldn’t just say, ‘hey Cupcake, let’s go on a picnic?” 

“Didn’t think of that. Now sit down and chill out before you have a stroke. Your face is bright red.” Carmilla orders, patting a section of the blanket beside of her.

“Chocolate milk?” Laura smiles when she realizes what’s in her cup/

“I know what you like, Sugar.”

“I like you an awful lot, you broody vampire.”


	50. Fireworks

"Babe, I don't think that this is such a good idea." Carmilla protests, for the first time with actual fear in her eyes. 

"I asked you and you said 'no'. Are you taking your 'no' back, Carm?" Laura asks, still brimming with anger. Laura was less angry with her girlfriend and much more angry with herself for not having been more able to understand what Carmilla had been feeling.

"No, I'm not, but I don't want you to go in there either. I don't want to see you get hurt and that is exactly what is going to end up happening if you try to go toe to toe with Mattie." Carmilla warns her. 

"I don't care if I could get hurt. This school needs a heroine and if it's not you then it needs to be somebody else. I'm taking your place." Laura says as she shrugs into her coat and slams the door behind her. 

An hour later and LaFontaine is growling at the pacing vampiress, and Danny is stomping around the upstairs floor. Perry, on the other hand was in the kitchen baking muffins. A single, resounding boom echoes out across the campus, startling everyone in the house. Before anyone could blink Carmilla was gone


	51. Journalist and Actress AU

Laura Hollis hadn't meant to join the same gym as Carmilla Karnstein. When it had all begun it was completely innocent. She had been meaning to get back into shape after a high school and college career of eating nothing but cookies, chocolate, and the occasional bowl of popcorn. It had been something that she had always wanted to try but now that she was a college graduate and a full-fledged journalist the unhealthy lifestyle had lost its appeal. She wanted/needed to start living and feeling better. However, this was a little hard to do when the drool-worthy Carmilla Karnstein is just across the room from you.

Her journalistic instincts were tingling and she just knew that if she could land that interview it would blow her career up and out of the water. Of course, there was the matter of the actress being so incredibly hot that she might make a complete idiot of herself but that was beside of the point. At the end of her workout day, Laura dragged her tired body into the showers, feeling like she wanted nothing more than to just melt into the floor and disappear. It got worse from there, because just after she had wrestled her way free and out of her tshirt, Carmilla Karnstein walked into the changing rooms.

"Oh, I'm sorry." The older woman corrects her line of vision to 'no longer ogling'. 

"It's no big. I would have done the same thing if our roles were reversed." Laura laughs it off, praying not to make a fool out of herself. 

"Alright, then." She replies, pulling off her shorts and shirt smoothly, obviously not caring that Laura was still in the room and still watching. 

Laura coughs nervously before turning around quickly, not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable.

"Obviously you know what I do. What do you do for a living?" Carmilla asks, surprising Laura by starting an actual conversation as she steps into the shower. Laura follows suit as she answers. 

"I'm actually a journalist." Laura answers hesitantly, not wanting to put Carmilla off of the conversation.

"You aren't going to like, stalk me, or anything are you?" Carmilla asks, glancing at Laura over the wall and making her blush.

"Not today. I make no promises, but not today." Laura teases with a petulant look back over at her. "How did you get into acting?" She asks, purely out of curiosity. 

"Don't try and interview me in the shower." Carmilla laughs, enjoying the banter. 

"I'm not, I'm just wondering." Laura says, getting increasingly uncomfortable. 

"I know cutie, I'm just messing with you." Carmilla continues. "It all started with a couple of commercials as a teenager and progressed from there. I never wanted to be in a movie or on a tv show and I definitely never intended to get famous." She says as she steps out of the shower. "How did you get into journalism?" 

"I've always been really curious about things and I just naturally ask a lot of questions. I always enjoyed writing and it just seemed like the obvious choice." Laura answers.

"It makes sense." She turns to watch Laura step it of the shower, her hair tied up into a messy bun. 

"Would you be willing to let me take you out to dinner if I were to trade you an interview?" Carmilla asks, feeling like for being in the same room as a journalist she was the one asking th vast majority of the questions. 

"I would have gone just for the food and the company...but since you're offering of course I would like to put myself on the journalistic map and have a hot date all at once. What do YA think I'm stupid?!" Laura teases back, finally feeling at ease. She smiles broadly after she's dressed and takes Carmilla's hand, surprised to feel that they fit.


	52. On Display

Laura Hollis considered herself to be a rather brave sort of person. She could take on a grown man, or an angry vampire without blinking an eye. She was the one person willing to sit in between two angry frat armies with more weapons than she had IQ points. However, she wasn’t shy either about screaming and running when she caught sight of a spider. This was exactly what happened when she was finally going to take a bath in the former Dean’s Jacuzzi and she saw an extremely large spider right-smack-dab in the middle. Without even thinking to grab a towel, and not covering any of her fun, pretty parts, Laura let out an ear-piercing screech and took off running into the hall.  
“Laura?! What? What’s wrong?” LaF asks, running out into the hall to check on their friend.  
“Spuh-spider.” she answers, still too scared to register her nakedness.  
“Uhm, Laura, honey...you’re nude.” Perry tells her as she directs LaF’s eyes away.  
“Oooohh, my God.” Laura blushes as a smirking Carmilla stalks down the hallway.  
“Don’t bother covering up, Cupcake. It’ nothing that I haven’t seen before.” She chuckles.  
“Now, please explain to me why I heard you scream and any and all of your more private of parts are on display in our hall.” Carmilla passes the younger girl her jacket.  
“Frosh says that she saw a spider.” LaF laughs.  
“Mattie, just drain me dry now, please.” Laura requests, her embarrassment only growing as more people arrived to see what was going on.  
“No way, this is much too good.”  
“Laura, let’s just get you back in there.” Danny says with a sigh as she tries not to smile.  
“Not until the spider’s gone.” Laura says stubbornly. Carmilla glides by her, blowing past into the bedroom through and into the bathroom.  
“What, this little guy?” she asks when she comes back, the spider perched on one long finger.  
“Get that demon away from me.” Laura snarls, backing up and into Danny.  
Carmilla leans down and places the arachnid on the floor slowly, every one of her movements fluid, like water.  
“Come on, it’s bathtime for the PopTart.” Carmilla smiles wickedly and flashes to right beside of Laura, picks her up and throws the small girl over her shoulder and zooms into the bathroom, slamming the doors and locking them all behind her.  
“What just happened?” LaFontaine asks, their confusion evident on their face.  
“Vampires tend to be very possessive of the people that they have claimed. Having every single one of us see Laura naked probably reminding the insect of who she belongs to as we speak.” Mattie drawls out in that languid manner of speech that she had.  
“What?” Perry asks, not understanding what it was that Matska was alluding to.  
“Sex, Perr. Lots of sex and maybe some more bitey-bitey.” LaF explains with an eyeroll before leading their best friend away.


	53. Goodnight

“Laura, how many times do I have to apologize?” Carmilla asks. “I accepted your apology, didn’t I?”  
“That was five years ago, Carm.” Laura scoffs.  
“Still, you screwed in a seriously major way and I forgave you, right?” Carmilla gives Laura her her most pitiful of ‘you know you love me’ looks.  
“You did...after a while. I’m taking my precious while.” she announces, making Carmilla groan.  
“What about my kisses?” the vampire asks, turning on her seduction eyes.  
“Oh, queen of the seduction eyes, do what you do best...seduce them out of me.” Laura says with a lifted eyebrow. Carmilla felt as though she had been dealt a dare, and she was more than willing to accept it.  
“You just wait, cutie.” Carmilla chuckles throatily at her before walking away for a moment. Laura grins to herself, wondering what she had gotten herself into, but looking forward to whatever it was that Carmilla had in store for her. Laura went about her chores in their little apartment for a while before settling down to work on an article, or that is, that was the plan until a certain vampire strode out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel that kept falling southward as the certain vampire moved about the room. Laura’s mouth went dry, but she absolutely refused to give in as Carmilla reused her old ‘boob to the face’ trick from many years before.  
“My tolerance levels have built up over the years, love. You’ll have to do better than that.” Laura scoffs, pretending that anything and everything that she did wasn’t still incredibly sexy to her.  
“Oh, Cupcake, that was just the warm-up. I have sooo much more where that came from.” Carmilla whispers in her sultriest of voices directly into Laura’s ear. Carmilla had seduced young virgins on her mother’s behalf for centuries before Laura had come along. Surely seducing her own little human couldn’t be that much of a struggle.  
\------//////------  
However, Carmilla was quickly proven wrong, and even got mildly offended at a few points when Laura’s lips did not open to her, even after a lap dance.  
“I’ve seen you naked more than once, my vampiress. Your ass in my face does not change the fact that I am angry with you.” she had said as though she were no longer at all impressed.  
“It’s getting late. Do you give up for the day?” Laura asks, ready for bed after a constant parade of every piece of lingerie that Carmilla and Laura had ever own as the little nerd had been trying to watch Doctor Who.  
“Fine, if only because you won’t be able to stop yourself from touching me while you’re asleep.” Carmilla pouts.  
“Awwwhh,” Laura laughs with mock pity.” did the stupid little game make the big, bad, scary and sexy vampire a little bit insecure?” she teases, wrapping herself around Carmilla in a hug.  
“I’ve been alive for many times the number of years that you have been alive. I don’t get insecure.” Carmilla scoffs.  
“Liar.” Laura laughs again, before heading into their bedroom to change clothes, adding a little sway to her hips just to annoy her girlfriend.  
Carmilla joins her a while later after some blood and a thorough brushing of her fangs adn other teeth. Having given up on her art of seduction, her hair was in its natural state of ‘wild and unruly’ and she was dressed in her most comfortable of pajamas.  
“Goodnight, Cupcake, and sleep well.” Carmilla says, as had become a part of their routine, settling in as Laura wraps her arms around her from behind.  
“Goodnight to you too, Carm.” Laura replies, leaning over for a quick kiss before bed, just like always.  
It takes a moment for what just happened to sink in before the couple starts to laugh.  
“It’s perfect.” says Laura. “That’s exactly how I feel. You putting on a show and preening in front of me isn’t what does it for me anymore. That’s silly and naive Laura. Domestic and settled Laura just loves you for you.” she explains once she has settled down some.  
Carmilla sits up in the bed and studies Laura for a moment.  
“Centuries of living, and you are the best thing that could have happened to me or to anyone.” the vampiress leans over to kiss Laura a little bit more thoroughly once more.  
“Goodnight, my seductress.”  
“G’night, Cupcake.”


	54. The Only Way

“Carmilla, when am I going to get to drive?” Laura asks petulantly.  
“Never. You are never driving again if I have anything to say about it.” Carmilla says forcefully as Laura leans her seat back. “You about to take a nap, Poptart?”   
“Nope. I’m just watching you.”  
“That’s not creepy at all.”  
“You are the main culprit of it, though. You watch me all of the time.” Laura argues.  
“I watch you to make that nothing happens to you. You watch me for heaven or hell knows why.” Carmilla points out the difference.  
“I watch you to make sure that you won’t just up and disappear one day. I watch you to make sure that one day, when we’ve become old, and boring, and domestic I won’t turn around and you not be there. That would crush me and I am not sure that I would ever recover.” Laura admits, leaning back in her seat and covering her eyes with her arm to block the sun.  
“How do you think that I will feel once I’ve lost you?” Carmilla asks her as they pull into a restaurant parking lot for dinner.  
“I don’t think that you will ever lose me.” Laura says, sitting up and leaning forward to look into Carmilla’s eyes.  
“I’m a vampire, Cupcake. I will live forever. YOu’re a human, and one day, sadly, you will die.I will be left here on the Earth for however long I will last. I’m going to have to go on for more centuries knowing that I won’t ever see you again, knowing that I won’t ever see you honey brown eyes glitter in the sunlight again or get to touch your hair. How am I expected to live like that, with only the memories of the hours spent studying you for as long as possible?” Carmilla asks, her voice fraught with pain. Laura hadn’t thought that Carmilla had been putting as much thought into the matter as she clearly had been. Still, Laura wanted to discuss the matter further.  
“That is what you want?” Laura asks. “If you turned me, then we could have every day and every night together for the rest of our eternity.”  
“I don’t want to put you through that. I don’t want to see anyone go through that ever again.” Carmilla refuses immediately as she unfolds herself from inside of the car. “I would rather spend your lifetime watching you.”  
“What if that is what I want?” Laura asks,  
“I won’t do it.” Carmilla says, acting as though the conversation was actually paining her.  
“If I were to…” Laura began.  
“No.” Carmilla says, knowing there was actually only way that she would ever turn her girlfriend.  
“We can discuss this later.” Laura says with a sigh.  
“You will get the same answer.” Carmila decrees.

\------///////------

“Laura, are you awake?” Carmilla asks, as Laura works to get her eyes open again.  
“What happened?” Laura asks, her voice and throat too dry to make her voice work properly.  
“There was a car accident, my love. You were hurt and the car was destroyed. I … I almost lost you, you nearly died.” Laura can see now that Carmilla’s face looked frantic. Her eyes were wider than she had ever seen before and her voice was unusually high and squeaky.  
“Are you alright?” Laura asks, ignoring her rumbling stomach as she strains to see if Carmilla had been hurt.  
“Easy there, baby. I’m alright.” Carmilla promises, a weak smile on her face.  
“Baby? You’ve never called me that before. I kind of like it.” Laura lays back with a sigh, wondering when she’s going to get to eat.  
“Yeah, well, a lot has changed in the past two days.” Carmilla admits.  
“I’m starting to figure that out. Your hand is warm on mine. Why is that? Are you sick? Can vampires get sick?” Laura asks, rubbing her eyes as she tried to get them to focus, the colors all seemed so bright.  
“No, my love, I swear that I am okay.” Carmilla promises again. “I’m just worried about how you are adjusting . You must be getting hungry.”  
“Starving.” Laura admits. “What exactly was it that happened to me, because I feel pretty much okay?”  
“You were crushed in between your seat and the dashboard of the car. Your ribcage was crushed, your lungs punctured and collapsed, and your stomach ruptured.” Carmilla explained. “And by the time that I got to you, you were mostly dead. I was forced to save you by making you into...well, Laura I turned you, and with your body in such a weak state, it nearly burned you up.” the vampiress, now also Laura’s sire, returned to her with a mug of blood, packaged neatly in the TARDIS mug. Laura turned it up and drained the whole thing at once.


	55. Inspiration

Laura knew for a fact that she was a truly horrible artist. She could not draw to save her life. However, she still very much enjoyed going out to museums and galleries to look at whatever they had. Sometimes, Laura felt as though she were getting into the artist’s head, hopefully feeling the same as how they felt while creating the same as how they felt while creating the piece. At some point someone had probably said that art was a peak into the soul or something like that.(If no one has ever said that, Laura just did.)  
Carmilla Karnstein knew for a fact that she was a truly fantastic artist. However, sometimes she very much came up at a loss for inspiration. To find something that would spark her interest, sometimes she would find a local artist’s gallery that would spark her interest, and look around, hoping for something to light that fire in her stomach, in her very soul, to make her want to work. She didn’t always find what she was looking for but, she did always get her blood and her mind to run again. Plus, she needed to move more often or she was going to get sick. The tortured artist vibe didn’t work on the ladies when you look like the walking dead.  
Carmilla was glad to find upon entering the gallery that she was alone but for a girl maybe a few years younger than herself who seemed to have come in off of the street. She raised her hand simply in greeting before returning her attention to an abstract painting that she had been pensively studying when Carmilla came in . The artist appreciated that a lot. Art galleries and museums were meant to be places of quiet and of peace.  
She settled herself onto a bench nearby and watched the stranger for a while, wondering what she could possbly be thinking about while staring at that one piece of art for so long. It almost seemed as though she were dissecting the artwork in her mind. Carmilla could appreciate her appreciation. Having decided on what to sketch, Carmilla pulled her pencil out from behind her ear and touched it to the paper, waiting for whatever was coming to come. She worked for what felt like ten minutes, but when she was done and she looked up, it had been an hour and a half.  
“That’s me?” asked a soft, small voice from over Carmilla’s shoulder.  
“Uhm, uh…” Carmilla stuttered, looking over her shoulder to see the girl that she had been sketching.  
“Oh, my God. You were never supposed to see that. I don’t even know you, I am so so sorry.” She mumbled.  
“No, it’s fine. I love it. You captured me beautifully. I take it that you’re an artist then, do you have a gallery like this one?” the girl sits down so that she can see it better.  
“Uhm, yeah.” Carmilla can’t help but be ashamed of herself for not being half as slick as she normally would have been. ”I really should have asked first, I’m sorry. Would you like to keep it?” Carmilla asks, passing the sheet to her.  
“No, just wait until I can get my hands on the painted version.” she says with a blinding grin. She hands the sketch back to Carmilla and moves along through the halls of the gallery.  
The artist was more than a little disappointed that she had failed in her mission to get her model’s name or number until she placed the drawing into her folder and discovered a number underneath the name Laura. Carmilla grinned, and headed back to her studio to move the drawing over and onto a canvas with paint. She could never wait once she got an idea into her head.


	56. Gym AU

Laura preferred yoga to an actual workout involving the weights or heavy lifting. It wasn’t that she looked down on that sort of thing, she thought that it was quite impressive, really, just not for her. Her favorite thing was to see a pretty girl in tiny clothes sweating it out with her fellow gym rats. There were quite a few regulars just like that in her regular gum as well. It could really be quite distracting while Laura attempted to meditate.  
Carmilla Karnstein couldn’t help but to be one of the people that Laura enjoyed watching. She was ‘super legit’ as she would say. Carmilla, at this point, could probably bench-press the smaller girl. Carmilla herself was impressed with what Laura did as well. She doubted that she would ever be able to get her body to bend in the ways that Laura could, and she occasionally found herself getting a little hot under her collar because of it. Carmilla would just pump out her frustrations into the irons.  
Laura went along with her class for the day, though her heart wasn’t quite into it. She had had a long and hard day at work and she just wanted to go home and go to bed until tomorrow. Carmilla, who was almost always enthusiastic about a good workout, had already noticed and her workout partner and sister Mattie, had noticed her noticing.  
“Your little crush isn’t quite up to par today, is she?” Mattie asks, wanting to get the subject out of the way so that her sister will actually get up and move.  
“No, she’s not. I wonder if she’s alright.” Carmilla says as though she has known the younger woman for all of her life.  
“Maybe you should ask her.” Mattie suggests. She had been trying for a while to get Carmilla to talk to her. “Laughter is often said to be the best medicine. Make her laugh.”   
“Yeah, maybe.” Carmilla mutters, bringing the bar back down to her chest and resuming her routine.

\-------//////------

Laura felt good and exhausted once her advanced yoga class was over. In fact, she was a little but worried that she might fall asleep in the shower. Carmilla noticed the droopy eyed look on Laura’s face and excused herself from the day’s work. Mattie understood why immediately and just shook her head. She couldn’t believe that the only things her sister actually knew about this girl were that she (usually) smiled a lot and that she was very enthusiastic about yoga, and she was already so whipped.

\------//////------

Carmilla is also wondering what the heck is wrong with herself as she enters the locker rooms only to hear Laura getting in the shower. She remembers Mattie’s advice to make her laugh, but can’t think of an appropriate manner in which to do that whilst the other party is in the shower. It’s not until she can hear Laura humming to herself that she gets an idea. The older woman strips down and steps into the shower, turning on the water as hot as it would go and tries to think of the most ridiculous song that she knows most of the words to, clears her throat and sings as though she were alone.  
“You’ve got the best of both worlds. Chill it out take it slow, and you rock out the show. You’ve got the best of both worlds, mix it all together and you know that it’s the best of both worlds.” she only knows the chorus, but by the time that she’s made it through it she feels like she has made the worst mistake in the world. that is, until she hears Laura clear her throat while stifling a laugh.  
“You’ve got the limo out front, woah oh oh. Every shoe, every style, every color. When you’re famous it can be kind of fun, and school’s cool cuz no one ever discovers, that you’ve got the best of both worlds…”  
Laura sings back, standing on her tiptoes to see who in the world would choose that particular song to sing in the shower, but totally digging it anyway. she thought that she would nearly faint when she notices that the only other person in the room was Carmilla, a pleased smile on her face as she joins in for the chorus. It was the weirdest way in the world to end up being cheered up, but Laura was way used to weird. she had long ago embraced the weird.  
“I never would have taken you for the Hannah Montana type.” Laura admits as they both wrap up in towels and step out of the shower.  
“I guess that there is a lot that you don’t know about me then.” Carmilla chuckles in response. “Hi, I’m Carmilla Karnstein.” she takes the opportunity to introduce herself.  
“I guess not. .” Laura replies, pulling on clothes beneath her towel, a little bit shocked by the way her day was turning out. “I’m Laura Hollis. I’m looking forward to the chance to find out more about you, Ms. Montana.”


	57. Beach Burn

“You’re a vampire, Carmilla. Of course you’re going to get sunburned, are you crazy?!” Laura scolds her girlfriend.  
“I hadn’t seen you come up for a long time.” Carmilla grumbles, shedding her shirt and bikini top as soon as Laura had shut the hotel room door.  
“Oh, honey, you look like a lobster.” Laura hisses with sympathy.  
“Vampirically pale skin does that, cutie.” Carmilla groans.  
“Luckily, I thought to bring the aloe with us, just wait here.” Laura instructs.  
“My Girl Scout, always prepared.” Carmilla says with an almost smile.  
“I do my best.” Laura scoffs, kneeling on the bed behind where Carmilla sat. The vampire sighs when the cooling gel hits her skin and Laura does her best to be as gentle as possible.  
“Why doesn’t this heal automatically like your other wounds, injuries, or ills?” she asks.  
“It is healing. It just goes much too deep to heal that quickly.” Carmilla explains.  
“You shouldn’t have tried to rescue me.” Laura scolds again. “You know that I’m a good swimmer.”  
“If I see you in danger, I’m always going to do whatever it takes to rescue you, no matter the cost to myself.” Carmilla says, turning to look at Laura behind her.  
“I can take care of myself better if I can count on you being okay.” Laura reminds her.  
“I can understand that.” Carmilla says with anod. “That doesn’t mean that I have to like it.”  
“Carmilla, don’t go all Danny Lawrence-style over protective of me again, okay?” Laura requests.  
“Yes, ma’am.” Carmilla says teasingly.  
“Don’t you ma’am me!” Laura protests, squirting Carmilla’s face and hair full of aloe gel.  
“That’s gross, Laura!” Carmilla scrambles up and onto the bed to tackle sting and throb of her burnt skin. They wrestle and play in a manner that Carmilla had only just begun to learn to enjoy again until they are both covered in sticky green-blue goo and are lying together breathless, Carmilla holding Laura’s shoulders down, pinning her to the bed and simply staring down into her golden brown eyes. The vampiress laughs as she smears a bit from Laura’s hair down and across the top and bridge of her nose, making her scrunch up her face adorably.  
“Gross.” she breathes as Carmilla lowers herself down and presses her lips to Laura’s, tasting salt water, sweat, and aloe.  
“I love you.” Laura whispers.  
“I love you, too.” Carmilla replies, flopping down onto the bed beside of the bed beside of her forgetting about her sunburn. “Yaowch!”  
“Oh, honey!” Laura sighs and laughs at the same time, kissing Carmilla’s cheek.  
“I should have let you save your freaking self.”  
“I’m not always in need of saving. I’m a good swimmer. I was okay the entire time.”  
“I knew that up here.” Carmilla gestures to her head. “I just panicked in here,” she points to her heart.  
“Your heart is safe with me, Carm. I won’t let anything happen to it or me.”  
“They’re the same exact thing.”


	58. Puppy

“Hey, Carm!” Laura shouts as she sneaks into the dorm room, a little brown bundle wrapped up in her sweater held close to her chest. When she gets no answer, Laura sits down on her bed and opens up the bundle a little bit, allowing the little black nose to poke up and out of the sweater. “Hi there, sweetie.” she whispers to the puppy.  
“Hello to you too, what do you have there, cutie?” Carmilla asks when she poofs into the room and sitting beside of Laura.  
“He was out in the snow and I couldn’t just let him stay out there to freeze to death...I hope you don’t mind.” Laura says with a pitiful, puppy dog expression on her face, made that much worse by the addition of an actual, real life puppy.  
“If you had left him to die, then you wouldn’t be you. Your good and kind heart is one of the main attributes of yours that had me being drawn towards you.” Carmilla wraps an arm around Laura’s shoulders and kisses her temple, and then her cheek. “Do you have a name for him yet?”  
“I’ve been thinking about it. I still don’t have anything, yet. Help me out, you know a lot more about just about anything than I do.” Laura requests, passing the squirming animal over to her girlfriend.  
“I say that we name him Snow or Snowflake or something, since you found him in it.” Carmilla recommends, stroking his head.  
“Those are really cheesy names...how about Frost?” Laura asks, returning with two mugs of cocoa.  
“Perfect.” Carmilla says with a grin, knowing that now that Laura had put a name to him and brought him home he was never leaving.


	59. Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

In the beginning, she scared me, quite a lot actually,and in more ways than one. She had all kinds of rage, pain, and sadness in her eyes. She was almost war incarnate. I never thought that she really knew what to do with all of it. She had dark hair, wore a lot of black, and knew no boundaries. Carmilla Karnstein was damn near limitless.  
She wasn’t often kind and she wasn’t often all there it seemed. She was beautiful in the saddest of ways. I believe it to have been then that she began to love me. I do believe that the vampiress had loved me truly. I know for a fact that I had loved her. It was a beautiful love in its own way, all encompassing and all consuming. Carmilla Karnstein had been wounded by love once before. We both had worried that maybe we would end up hurting one another we both had worried that maybe we would end up hurting one another. We both had worried that maybe we would both end up not being worth it to one another. We were nearly right.  
In the middle, we were happy for just a little bit. Then arrived the intruders to shake things up. In our running from safe and peaceful bubble to safe and peaceful hidey-hole we had never had the opportunity to find the faults inherent to our having to be together. There was such a difference to needing someone to being able to be with one another. Our differences formed an immutable barrier between us that neither of us could leap.  
I could barely manage to keep the pieces of my broken world from floating away, much less my broken heart, my broken mind, my broken relationship, or the pieces of my broken friends. Everything had flown away and nothing would stay within my reach. I had precious little to hold onto and to that i clung with what little was left of my strength, taking risk after risk after risk. Nothing was ever at all what it seemed to be. Not the alley cats, not my friends, suddenly even my firm and solid rock seemed to be shifting and fading away as well and I felt what was left of myself begin to fade away.  
At the end of that most recent crisis we began to rebuild the pieces of the school and ourselves. My alley cat and I began to put who we were back together. We both knew that we needed to know who we were before we could discover who we could be together. Some parts of both of us were now irreparably broken. I had lost parts of myself now that I could probably never recover. Carmilla had been missing parts of herself for decades and maybe even centuries that she was only just now rediscovering.  
We put our own selves back together before returning to the other. The alley cat had centuries worths of patience and the burning behind her eyes was certainly enough to spur me on. Her heart and my heart spurred one another on and on. She made me happy and I made her better, I could hope, though sometimes now, I still wondered about how good I really was. I hoped to be able to make her happy one day as well. Love doesn’t have to meant the same thing to everyone. Almost is one of the saddest of words It took me a long time to be able to grasp the hidden meanings upon meanings deep within those words.  
Beginnings. Middles. Ends. We have had the longest of MIddles, the most dramatic of all Beginnings. No one has had quite the same story as the pair of us. A naive provincial girl, all too tightly wound and a centuries old vampire, powerful and strong but equally gentle with all of the potential for love that any one human could ask for. She was a true diamond in the rough. She chose me to be love. She chose me to protect. Even when I felt like I was going to crumble into a pile of dust of the most human dust, that was there in the back of my mind always, always waiting on me. It was like home, with her. Always her.


	60. Hours and Days

I’ve spent hours and days watching her. She was so bright before and now that light flicker constantly. She’s fading fast and no one but me has noticed. Laura hates for people to take care of her and she is so fiercely independant, but I don’t think that she has noticed that sometimes she needs it. Still, I remember how she went off on Xena. Still, I don’t want Laura to end up losing the parts of her that make her Laura. I don’t want her to lose the things that make her shine.  
For an hour she will work in a flurry of energy, hurriedly as though everything will end if she stops and/or took a break. I wanted to help. I knew that she wouldn’t let me. So, I stayed in the back and waited until I was needed. I stayed and I watched.  
The one thing that Laura needs out of me, I can’t give her. I still want to help some, but I know so much that she doesn’t. I know so much that she can’t. I know so much that she will never understand. We spend days in a tense stand off. I spend hours looking into her eyes trying to figure out where her mind is. I spend hours trying to figure why she thinks that I would ever.


	61. NSFW: Picture It

Laura approaches, a light blush already coloring her cheeks Carmilla’s breath catches in her chest, forcing it’s way down her throat as she is stunned into not breathing for a moment. As she observes the younger woman pulls her shirt up and over her head. If Carmilla could blush she would. Centuries of living had passed and she had never been so shocked before.  
Laura was in her personal space now and,more forcefully than expected, Laura shoves her shoulder, forcing Carmilla to sit down on the bed. Laura kneels and straddles her waist, her cold hands slipping underneath the vampire’s shirt and pulls it off, Carmilla obediently raising her arms.  
“Laur…” she starts and trails off, Laura pushes her down with one hand on the shoulder again, until she’s lying back on the bed. The human’s hot mouth is on her own again, a sharp contrast to te cold hands on her waist and working on the buttons of her jeans, slipping those off again. Hot kisses down her jaw, then throat, and then collar bone, steal Carmilla’s breath again, leading down and down and down…


	62. Video Game

“Laura, what craziness are you getting up to now?” Carmilla asks, her girlfriend on the couch in their library basement prison, playing some kind of video game that she had found. She sits next to her with a book that looks as though it could fall apart any moment now.  
“Just a game. It’s kind of based off of the life of Lois Lane I think. The main character is a journalist who always gets herself into large amounts of trouble involving the supernatural. That character...there is always having to save her life, despite pretending as though she doesn’t want to.” Laura explains, not even thinking about what she was saying as she did so. Carmilla sits up quickly and squints at the screen, looking closely at the people that Laura had pointed out.  
“Are you not getting it?” Carmilla asks, looking very much amused.  
“I kind of ship it. I love how no matter what they are going through or what status their relationship is in, they are willing to walk through fire for one another.”   
“Just like us?” Carmilla points out, kissing Laura’s temple.  
“Oh wow… you are right. Those two are US.”


	63. Waking Up

“Carmilla, love. Can you get up, please?” Laura asks, her voice wavering in fear and pain. Carmilla recognizes her tone and shoots up and out of their bed.   
“What’s wrong? What happened? Are you hurt….Oh, God..” Carmilla asks, fear coloring her voice.  
“Perry...Dean. Perry’s-the-Dean.” Laura chokes out, her hands covering her side. Blood leaks from her nose and the corner of her mouth. Her hands too, are doused in the sticky red stuff, forming gruesome gloves. Carmilla takes it all in in half of a second and leaps up and towards her, a supportive arm around her waist. She peels away Laura’s hand and pulls up the shirt to check the wound.  
“Oh, you’re not that bad off. Everything will be fine.” Carmilla lies, a knot forming in her throat.  
“Bullshit.” Laura sputters, blood bubbling sit at her lips when she speaks.  
“Who are you talking to? If I say so, if I make that promise to you, then you can bet your adorable ass that I am going to be right.” Carmilla swears, laying Laura down on the floor and cutting off the cloth, getting a better look at her injuries. She swallows hard, dials LaFontaine on speaker phone and begins to treat the wound as best she possibly can.  
“LaFontaine, Perry has been possessed by the Dean. She has stabbed Laura and I need you to help me treat it. She’s lost a lot of blood. Get here ASAP.” she says as quickly as possible into the phone before hanging up without waiting for a response.  
Laura splutters again, trying to speak through the pain and the blood.  
“I’m not going to make it through this, Carmilla. You know that.” she says blankly, pain in her eyes, but completely devoid of any fear.  
“No, no, no, you will be just fine. We were supposed to have the rest of your life. I was going to watch you grow old and love you for the rest of my miserable existence. We were supposed to be together, Laura.” Carmilla chokes on her own words, bloody tears, making tracks down her cheeks.  
“If this is it, my vampire, tell my father that I love him and that I’m sorry.” Laura coughs again, wracking through her entire body. “And you know that I love you too.” she reaches one blood soaked hand up to Carmilla’s face but doesn’t quite make it, she’s much too weak. Carmilla grabs that hand and hugs it to her cheek, thinking that she would do anything to save her love.  
“I could change you.” she says aloud, unsure of how Laura would take the proposition.  
“If you want to. Only if you need me so much…” she gasps for a rattling breath. “that you can deal with the guilt.” the light began to fade from her light brown eyes, smoothing over what should be lively and curious. Carmilla’s mind races, trying to find other options. Any other option. She needed more time to think, and it was all running out on her at once. The fact that she could live without Laura wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be any kind of life at all. It wouldn’t be her living well. As LaFontaine finally began to enter the room, they saw Carmilla’s sparkling white fangs sinking into the soft skin of Laura’s throat.


	64. Weeks, Months, and Years

It took weeks for Laura to feel like a person without Carmilla. After the breakup she kind of felt as though she were living with one arm completely missing. As she had said before, it felt as though someone had cut a hole in her. Laura missed the vampire, so badly, it hurt like, a toothache. Carmilla had taken a piece of the little human with her when she had left.  
For weeks Carmilla felt completely lost. Without Laura she didn’t have any idea at all of where she might even want to go. Without Laura she felt as though her very humanity was beginning to slip away. Cutting their relationship off had been one of the single most painful things that she had ever done, though completely necessary. Carmilla knew that she couldn’t be with someone who would ask her to fight against her own sister. To try and fight against someone that she had known and loved for centuries longer than she had known Laura.  
Months later and the catastrophe was over. At least this most recent situation had passed. Laura was working her way back into a good place, a good place where she and Carmilla might be able to at least talk to one another again. She already knew that it wasn’t at all going to be easy. However, she also thought that it was going to be worth it.   
Months later and Carmilla just felt tired. Everybody had already been through so much and she just wanted to grab Laura up and take her to some safe and impenetrable fortress where nobody could ever get to them. they could be safe, together and in love. However, Carmilla already knew that Laura always refused to run away from anything just because it was hard.  
Years later and Laura was finally feeling happy again. She had her arm back and that hole had been filled in her chest again. Carmilla regularly made everything better with just her presence. with Carmilla, Laura finally felt safe, but she felt like she was nearly too safe, like something was wrong and she didn’t know it. then she would see Carmilla and remember that she actually was that happy.  
Year later and and Carmilla was finally feeling as though she might be at peace. SHe had golden the girl and lost a lot else over the years. She knew that her relationship with Laura would have never been completely normal, but neither of them really minded, she thought. Normal had always been totally over rated. Her un-normalcy was what had always allowed her to take care of Laura. Carmilla would never give that up, she loved that she could protect the younger girl.


	65. Laura's Dead

“Who are you?” the older man standing beside of the coffin next to Carmilla asked.  
“A...friend from college.” Carmilla attempted to lie.  
“Right, now tell me for real who you are. I know exactly what ‘friend’ means. How long were the two of you together?” he asked, his tone a little bit more abrasive than he had meant for it to come out.  
“I’m sorry, why exactly should I be required to tell you my love story?” Carmilla growls, her tone came from the same place that his had. They were both hurting still yet.  
“I’m Laura’s father.”  
“You clearly haven’t been watching the vlogs have you?” Carmilla snorts.  
“I haven’t heard anything about vlogs. I gave her a TracPhone so that she wouldn’t be able to do anything crazy like that.” he grumbles.  
“You also gave her a laptop with a high res camera. In what universe does that make sense to anyone at all ever?” Carmilla asks.  
“I tend to occasionally be a little bit scatterbrained okay?” he growled.  
“What in the absolute world is wrong with you two?” Laura hisses from behind her, an arm slipping around her waist. “Why are you creeping up here?”  
“We aren’t creeping, we were just mourning your death, that’s all.”   
“I told you that you were both too sensitive to handle looking at my fake dead body in a coffin. Come on, we need to get out of here before anyone notices that I am a walking cliche attending my own funeral.”  
“You did technically die. You’re immortal, and an undead vampire.” Carmilla grumbles.  
“And you two still managed to attempt to screw up my funeral by arguing at the coffin. I should have introduced you two before we put the plan into action.”


	66. Marked

My father could be described as overprotective at the least. When I was very little, he signed me up for Tae Kwon Do, and he pulled me out of kindergarten after only a half-semester i exchange for home-schooling. In this same vein, he isn’t one to allow me to get a tattoo to help me meet my soulmate now that I’m old enough. I doubt that he would even ever want me to meet my soulmate. Losing his own, my mother, changed him. It wasn’t for the better either.  
I have a few tattoos of my own anyway, though not of my own choosing. My soulmate apparently has a thing for type print poetry and flowers. I never showed my dad, or anyone else for that matter. It all felt too private, too personal, the sort of thing that should be kept between the two of us. My lack of a want for tattoos, or the permission to get them, has not stopped me at all when it came to body art. I’m a fantastic doodler, and if there were a demand for it, I could be a pro. This is generally what I do as opposed to studying.  
My favorite thing is to recreate the vines that climbing up the tree outside along my arm. This particular design became routine until one day, after a mad itchy spell, it didn’t wash off. I checked the marker that I had used and it wasn’t permanent, just normal washables. I picked it up and scrawled a note across the inside of my forearm.

“Did you really get my doodle as a tattoo?” - L

I left it alone for a while, not expecting a reply until the itch distracted me from my TV show.

“I got attached to it, you seemed to like it, and it is much more my style than the cupcake, Cupcake.” - C

I washed off my original message and drew three or four cupcakes in reply.  
She drew a set of teeth biting into it.

“So, mysterious soulmate, do you have a name?” - Cupcake

“Carmilla, cutie.” - Carmilla

“Do you?” - C

“Laura. What do you look like?” - L

“I’ll stick with Cupcake. If I were to tell you, how would I maintain my air of mystery?” - C

“Hmph.” - L

I laugh. I can already tell that this girl is going to be a handful for me, and I’m pretty sure that I won’t mind.  
“Where do you live?” - C

“Toronto, Canada. What about my air of mystery?” - L

“You’re a Cupcake. What secrets could a cupcake have?” - C

“More than you might think.” - L

“What about you?” - L

“Are you in high-school?” - C

“Senior. Home school. My dad can be very overprotective so I don’t get out much… or at all really.” - L

We started to talk a lot more after that, over the course of a few weeks and I started to wear long sleeves all of the time to hide the vine tattoos and the ink stain of hundreds of prior conversations past. We didn’t trade cell phone numbers because it didn’t seem necessary and I wasn’t allowed a phone at all. For a while, my father was none the wiser and I was happier than I had ever been. When my father noticed that I was acting differently, he got worried and started to snoop around. I gave Carmilla my home address, just in case. That worried her, I could tell, but I didn’t offer any other explanations.  
I couldn’t help but to be a little bit happy that she cared enough to worry.

“I am going to buy you a cell phone. Screw your dad.” - C

“No, Carm. I’ll be okay.” - L

“It’s that or me coming to prison break you.” - C

I didn’t respond for a while after that. My father had figured it out, and interrupted things a little. He ripped my left sleeve off and I can’t say that the messages written there were the best ones that he could have found.

“NO, you’re too young.” he growls.  
“What? For a cell phone or for a soulmate?” I ask with a scoff. The vines twisting around my wrist were my comfort as my dad glared at me, fury and betrayal in his voice.  
“Either! Both! You’re my little girl, my baby and I can’t have you out running around and getting yourself into trouble.” he bellows  
“I’m nearly eighteen. I should be able to go out and drive and work and date, not sit locked in my room all day.” I covertly shove a marker into my pocket.  
“You aren’t going anywhere.” he growls before shutting and locking my door behind him.  
I glance around my room at books that I have read a hundred times before and the same comforter and sheets set that I have slept underneath since I was nine. I make a decision then adn it is probably te scariest and bravest thing that I have ever done. I rub the bruises on my arms and cheek and mourn the loss of that part of my life for a half second.

I change my clothes and I pack a bag before whipping out my sharpie. Apparently I had neglected my arm during the scuffle with my father.

“I miss you. Talk to me.” - C

“Please tell me that you are okay.” - C

“I’m worried now.” - C

“Scared now.” - C

“Please...I love you, Cupcake. Please be okay.” - C

“Is that a bruise? What the hell happened?!” - C

“I love you too, Carmilla.” I write. “Just a bit banged up. Still, how are we feeling about that Prison Break?” - L

“Be right there, Cupcake.” - C

My heart began to pound at the idea of running away from home, at meeting Carmilla in person, at the fact that we loved one another after such a very short time. I wondered what she looked like, if she were anything like the woman that I had dreamed up in my mind. I already couldn’t help but to love her, and I had never even seen her. Maybe she already had googled me or looked me up or asked around about me. I hope that she isn’t disappointed.

Finally, I start to hear pecks at my window and the sound of teenage girls arguing and whisper shouting loudly below.

I open the window and peer out over the ledge.

“Carm?!” I whisper.

“Hey, Cupcake. I brought a few friends, hope that you don’t mind.” Carmilla is bad news in black leather with an attitude to match. She’s also holding a ladder and is being backed up by three redheads and two dark haired fraternity boys. As quietly as possible she leans it against my windowsill and Carmilla runs up to help me hand down my things. Now that I can actually see her, I realize that she is outstandingly beautiful. She has a jawline carved from actual marble and long raven black hair that I am just dying to run my hands through.  
She’s handing down my bags and hurrying me on, but I stand there gaping like an idiot, thoroughly distracted by her beauty. Her eyes meet mine and they are such a dark brown that they are nearly black. The kind of brown that sucks you in so that you can’t pull yourself away. Finally, Carmilla looks just as distracted as I am.

“Hi,” I say. “I’m Laura.” I don’t know why I felt as though introductions were necessary.

“Hey, I’m Carmilla.” she replies in a dusky, sultry voice. I wonder what it is that she might be seeing when she looks at me.

“It is very nice to see you.” I add, my eyes are probably as wide as saucers.

“You are everything that I could have ever hoped for and more.” Carmilla tells me, surprising me and throwing me for a major loop. The older girl offered me her hand, decorated with matching green vinery. My own grips the art and our feet hit the ground together. I fall into her arms. The embrace is almost all that is holding me up.  
“Come on, ladies. We need to get moving or we are going to get caught.” calls the short-haired redhead.  
We climb into the van together and Carmilla draws me in against her, arms locked around my waist. She kisses my throat, right along my carotid artery and I shiver.  
“You terrified me.”  
“I know, I’m sorry. I should have gotten back to you much more quickly.”   
“That’s okay, Cupcake. I’ve got you now.”  
“I love you.” I tell her.  
“I love you too.” she answers.


	67. Breaking Waves

Laura Hollis is not a witch, and if one of her friends used the ‘w-word’ around her, the yelling didn’t stop for a very long time. However, as LaFontaine had once said the lady doth protest too much. Or maybe that was Shakespeare, who knows. Laura was just a college girl who knew very well how to bend and shape science to enforce her will. This included, but was not limited to, summoning, learning extra languages in no time flat, light levitations, and one time even an almost love potion.

Laura’s favorite was the summoning part. Her very first time she had been around six years old and had poofed up a crotchety old vampire who still looked as though she were in her early twenties or late teens. According to Carmilla however, she was upwards of three centuries old. The vampires, after having overcome her shock of having a sobbing child as her new mistress, had sat patiently and listened to Laura cry for the death of her murdered mother. Carmilla hadn’t felt so strongly for a human in quite a long time. Then Laura, had come out with this; “And I want you to go hunt him down and kill him.”

The little golden girl glimmered in the sunlight that Carmilla could never touch. She quite desperately wanted to reach out and comfort the little one, an innocent who had just been tainted by the darkness of the world around her for the very first time. Light brown eyes glimmered with anger, too large for her pale and haunted face. Carmilla knew that she could break out of the holding spell that she had been placed in in half of second, and have Laura drained dry in the span of a heart beat. Still, she say and heard the kid out.

“Are you sure about that, cutie? Ten years old is a bit young for becoming a murderer.” Carmilla asks, desperately hoping to make Laura rethink what she was doing. For some unknown reason, she wanted this golden girl to retain her innocence.

“Didn’t you hear me? No one ever caught him. He got away scott free, he killed my mother and he will never be punished. You are under my control, under my power, and I told you to go take care of him. Go, punish him. Make him pay.’ Laura waved her hand and dismissed the spell, but Carmilla had gotten what she had wanted, her new instructions were to ‘make him pay’ as opposed to killing him. That was much more flexible and any spilled blood would be on the vampire’s hands and fangs as opposed to the little cupcake’s pretty head.

\-----//////-----

“That woman you killed… did you know that she was married? That she had a family?” Carmilla manifested her human-shaped form from the shadows behind a scraggly haired addict, a needle already half of the way into his vein. He whipped around, but couldn’t see anything behind him, Carmilla had already disappeared.

“Her husband is so kind, and do you know who he passed that kindness on to?” she asked, centuries of rage at the unfairness of the world looking out and into her voice, making it low and guttural. Her fingernails lengthened just as quickly as her fangs had and gently raked down across his throat.

“His daughter, his daughter who was so kind and so good is now tainted because you murdered her kind and good mother. WHy can’t people like you and I just leave people like them alone?” Carmilla asks herself. Her claws dig in a little bit deeper and the junkie begins to tremble. She lets him loose and he collapses to the ground in a heap.  
“I won’t taint my fangs with your blood.” she knocks him unconscious with a swing of her right foot and cracks his ribs with her left. A cry echoes from a room down the hall. THis was the kind of cry that Carmilla had avoided during the entirety of her after light as a vampire. Still, she knew that she couldn’t leave another innocent behind when she had just professed to value it so highly.  
She awkwardly lifts the child from the carrier from which it had been squalling and poof him into the hospital where she knew that he would be cared for. After having stripped the innocence from Laura so cruelly, Carmilla thought it fitting that this man be so stripped of his own child as Laura had been stripped of and from her mother. The baby would be better off without that man anyway.

\-----//////-----

“The job is done. Did it make you feel better, Creampuff?” Carmilla asks from where she reclined on Laura’s floor in the center of her pentagram. It was a shoddy attempt at summoning, the vampiress was glad that it was her who Laura had summoned, otherwise her golden innocent would be dead.

“No, I don’t feel anything at all.” Laura sat on her bed, hugging her yellow pillow to her chest. She trembled so hard that Carmilla could hear the shaking of the bed springs.

“I didn’t think that it would. What you need to to do, sundance, is to let go of your anger and allow yourself to use that energy for grieving.” Carmilla advises, wishing that she could hug Laura who so clearly needed it.

“What have you lost? Why would you ever need to grieve, you’re a vampire.” Laura obviously didn’t know much about what it was that she had summoned. In her rage and her grief she had just gone for it and had done next to no research on the matter.

“I am centuries old, Pop Tart, and back when I was human, I did have a family. I had a mother and a father and siblings who grieved for me, not knowing that I would be forced to watch them die, and watch my siblings die, and their children, and their grand-children. I have grieved, Laura Hollis, more than your young soul could ever hope to bear.” Carmilla studies her hands in her lap. The little figure crosses the room slowly, and despite the danger that she should have thought of Carmilla as posing, she wrapped her arms around Carmilla’s waist and hugged her tightly.

“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t even imagine. Here I’ve been complaining to you about losing my mom, and you’ve lost everyone.” Laura cried into Carmilla’s t-shirt.

“You always have permission to grieve over a lost parent who loved you and whom you loved. To lose a mother is one of the hardest burdens to bear, especially at your young age.” Carmilla lifted her arms away from the child, unsure of how to respond to the show of affection. “Just stay away from all of this stuff from now on, okay kid? You’ve made several potentially dangerous mistakes here.” Carmilla points out. “I could have killed you hundreds of times over by now.”

The two spent the next hour with the vampire pointing out and teaching Laura how to do better if she ever felt like she had needed to something incredibly crazy like that again.

“And if you ever need to summon anyone for anything again. You come and check with me first. Before you do anything.” Carmilla repeats herself again.

“I get it, ‘summoning demons and monsters and vampires is dangerous’.” Laura rolls her eyes as she prepares to release Carmilla from the magical hold that she had placed the vampire under. “Thank you...for everything.” she told the vampiress with a soft and sad smile.

She didn’t summon the vampiress again for two years.

\-----//////-----

“Hello, my name is Carmilla and I will be your vampiric slave to- oh, it’s you. How have you been, cutie?” Carmilla asks. “You’re taller than I remember.”

“And you look exactly the same. I’d thought that I had dreamed you” Laura gets as close as she is willing to to the edge of the pentagram.

“How long has it been? I have no concept of time when I am … there.” Carmilla asks, excited to be seeing Laura again. I could have been a week since the last time she was summoned or it could have been fifteen years.

“Six years.” Laura answers.

“So, you’re twelve now and almost as tall as I am.” Carmilla says with an affectionate sigh.

“The doctors say that I’m probably done growing. I won’t get any taller.”Laura says with a light blush.

“You’re growing up well.” Carmilla tells her with a soft smile. “Did you summon me just to chat or do you have a job for me?”

“Mostly just as a reassurance that I’m not insane, but since you are here there is something that I would like for you to help me with.” Laura shuffles through the papers covering her desk. “You told me that you’re over three centuries old, right?” she asks.

“Yeah, I am. Why do you ask?”

“What can you tell me about the French and Indian War?” Laura pulls out her history homework and purposefully smudges the pentagram nonchalantly with her foot, allowing Carmilla to roam freely.

“You must be absolutely crazy.” Carmilla’s eyes go wide in shock. “I could eat you for dinner. I could leave and go on a killing spree and no one would ever be able to catch me.” she rants, standing quite purposefully in the center of what had once been a magical cage.

“You won’t. I trust you.” Laura says, faith in her brown eyes.

“I have killed hundreds, even thousands of people in a single day before. I am still a vampire and I am still incredibly dangerous.” Carmilla growls.

“Stop that and help me with my homework.” the tiny human orders.

Carmilla retracts her fangs, rolls her eyes, and sits down beside of Laura on the bed, pulling the worksheet into her lap.

“This is the most ridiculous thing to have ever happened to one of my kind.” she groans, and spends a very quiet and pleasant evening teaching Laura history and getting caught up on pop culture.

“Why are you so different from the other vampires that I have heard of?” Laura asks as she reclines against her pillows and watches Carmilla go through the bookshelves.

“I’ve somehow held onto a bit more of my humanity than many of my brethren. Maybe I remember more of what it is like to be alive. I don’t really know, I still crave blood and I adore the thrill of the hunt, but I still feel things. I still feel everything.” Carmilla stares at the ceiling mournfully. “Sometimes I wish that I didn’t, but wishing won’t ever get you anywhere, you remember that, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“Yeah, you definitely are, especially in comparison to me.” Carmilla laughs. She ruffles Laura’s hair with a smirk. “Enjoy being a kid. It doesn’t last that long. it’s that innocence in you that drew me to you, it’s why I didn’t kill you that day two years ago. Hold on to that. Promise me that you will hang on to that. she begs, kind of surprising Laura.

“I promise. I promise.” she swears.

“Good. Now, send me back to where I belong. My being here is dangerous for you.” Carmilla runs her hands through her long black hair.

“I’m going to have to write down all of my questions about the supernatural and history and you for next time. I can’t remember them now that I actually have the chance to talk to you.” Laura says with a sigh.

“You act like you’ve known me for your entire life.” Carmilla laughs.

“It feels like that to me. Almost as though my imaginary friend were touchable and could talk back and kill loads of people. Maybe that’s why I felt like maybe I had just made you up like you were all in my head.” Laura thinks aloud, her eyes still sparkling with life and light. Carmilla treasured that look on her face. Her golden girl was still golden.

“Believe you, me. I am quite real, and I have left you a few reminders of that fact around your room.” Carmilla allows Laura to hug her, and this time she returns the embrace. “You be good, Poptart. Okay? Don’t forget that you are my golden girl. Stay gold.” she hands Laura a copy of S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders” and kisses her forehead. “Hopefully, one day I will get to see the beautiful woman that you become.”

\------/////-----

After the second summoning, Laura’s life began to pick up. School got harder, girls got hotter, and the world around her gradually began to get a lot more interesting. She didn’t have much time to indulge herself in summoning a vampire from wherever it was that Carmilla went when Laura sent her back. Still, she read a lot, and a wide smile crossed her face whenever she would come across books on her shelf that definitely hadn’t been there before. Carmilla most certainly had a tendency to wax romantic through those books. She had probably been a philosophy major in college. Immediately on her Carmilla questions list she had added ‘college’ with a question mark beside of it, and below that ‘major’. The list was almost one hundred questions long now. She read the classics that showed up, “The Outsiders” first, and “To Kill a Mockingbird”, along with “The Scarlet Letter”, “Night”, “Ben-Hur”, and even “War and Peace”, by the time that she was sixteen. She worked hard on others that were clearly gifts from Carmilla as well. Books by philosophers and people that even Laura’s literature and history teachers hadn’t heard of appeared on her shelves and desk randomly over the course of several months as well. Camus and Spenser showed up several different times as well.

Laura didn’t summon Carmilla again for a very long time, and she was almost twenty.  
\-----/////------

Carmilla showed up and immediately flashed backwards sixteen years. Laura was curled up on the floor in front of her, crying hard, but with the even more hardcore edition of being partially naked and a lot more bloody and bruised.

“Laura, what happened? Where are we? Are you okay?” Carmilla showered her with questions.

“I was raped, college, and most certainly not.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“Immediately.’

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“Yes, I got a rape kit on top of the morning after pill.”

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Sorry, but I’ll be fine.”

“You are a goodly ways away from fine, and will be for quite a while yet.” Carmilla’s heart hurts, but Laura has a very solid pentagram set up and she can’t get out. “What do you want me to do?” she asks. If Laura asked Carmilla to get her payback, Carmilla would return with the bastard’s head on a spike. That still wouldn’t be payment enough.

“I don’t want you to kill anybody. I want you to make sure that nothing like this ever happens to me again. I want you to teach me to defend myself and I want you to guard me, at least until you think that I am strong enough, unless you wish to stay with me, at which point you may stay as a friend and companion. I give you your leave to come and go as you please. I give you your leave to do as you wish when your company is not required..” Laura read from a sheet of paper. Lines were scratched out in places and notes were scribbled in the corners. It was formal and powerful and Carmilla could feel it all in her chest.

“You do know that you just basically set me free right? Carmilla asks in awe as the pentagram on the floor shrank, deep set into the floor.

“I set up barriers.” Laura says defensively.

“No killing isn’t much of a barrier.” Carmilla snorts. “I could still cause all kinds of havoc.”

“Shut up and help me get into the shower.” she growls. “We both know that you won’t, you care too much about my soul and my conscience.”

Carmilla sighs softly and sadly at the little girl who isn’t quite so little anymore.

“My golden girl.” she says with centuries of emotion in her voice.

“Nothing gold can stay.” Laura refutes.

“I never took you for one to believe in that.” Carmilla comments, lifting Laura from the floor and carrying her to the shower. She sets the small girl, gently, into the bathtub fully clothed and filled it with warm water and starts to wash her off.

“Why do you care about me so much?” Laura asks, helping Carmilla to take her ruined shirt off, ignoring the vampire’s blush.

“You treated me like a person, and not a supernatural servant. You were sweet and innocents. You believed in me and I needed that. I’ve always had a weakness for children and watching you grow up a little led me to care and to get invested.” Carmilla admits.

“I don’t think that I’m golden anymore. Do you love me anyway? I hate the man who raped me just like I hate the man who murdered my mother. I have carried the weight of having had you kill him every minute after having told you to do it. the guilt made me feel almost as though I deserve this.” Laura told Carmilla as the vampire gently washed the grime from her hair.

“Sweetpea, I didn’t kill the man who murdered your mother. I did as you asked and I made him pay, but I did not end his life.” Carmilla finally confesses nine years later. “I was hoping that you knew that.”

“What did you do?”

“I stole his child from him.”

“You killed a kid?”

“I put him in an orphanage. I don’t kill kids.” Carmilla growls at her, supremely insulted.

“And him?”

“I put the fear of God into him and then I beat him senseless. It wasn’t pretty, he’ll probably never walk or breathe the same way again. I would never have allowed that kind of blood to be put upon your head. No, this happened to you because the world is a dark and a dangerous place and you are a golden being in it.” Carmilla strokes Laura’s hair back from her face and kisses her forehead in the same manner that she had years ago when Laura had been a kid. Carmilla sighs in her old, ancient, centuries of living vampire way. Laura dissolves then, the tears arriving with what seemed to be no end. Clean now, Carmilla lifts Laura from the bathtub and sets her on the toilet lid, wrapping her in a clean white towel. She washes her hands and lets the water run out. The vampire reaches to begin drying Laura but the young woman grabs onto her arm and refuses to let go. Carmilla can see now, what is happening. The small human needed to be comforted.

She allowed Laura, her golden beautiful girl, to collapse into her arms and cry and rage and even scream a little bit. Carmilla wasn’t used to physical contact unless there was a fight going on. Holding Laura tightly against her chest was purely instinct. Stroking her hair was something that Carmilla distantly remembered her own mother doing for her a long long time ago. Kissing Laura’s cheek every now and then was something that she just really wanted to do. When the storm raging on the inside of Laura calmed a little bit, Carmilla scooped her up again and carried her to bed, where she promptly fell fast asleep. The vampire covered her with a blanket and left to go hunt a motherfucker down.

Laura wasn’t surprised to wake up to Carmilla reentering her dorm room covered in blood, however she was rather shocked to see her still angry enough to be in full vampire mode, teeth pointed and nails elongated. It was rather intense.

“Are you hurt?” she asked immediately.

“No, but I guess that it’s kind of hard to tell like this isn’t it?” Carmilla chuckles darkly.

“You’re covered in blood. If you go shower, I’ll lend you some of my clothes.” Laura offers.

“My clothes are just as immortal as I am.” Carmilla laughs, sinking down to all fours into the form of a giant black cat, before melting upwards again into a teenage vampire girl again. She was wearing a fresh t-shirt and pajama pants when she stood up again.

“You just turned into a giant black cat!” Laura looks awed and a little perplexed, but not even mildly alarmed.

“Didn’t I mention that I can do that? Yeah, I can do that. Sooo, how old are you now?” Carmilla asks, fresh and clean as though she hadn’t just beaten the actual shit out of a man.

“19, almost 20. I’m a sophomore in college.” Laura answers.

“What did you major in?” Carmilla asks, bringing Laura a clean set of pj’s.

“Journalism. Somebody got me into hardcore literature when I was younger. Like, the philosophy kind of bullshit.” Laura says teasingly.

“I just thought that it would be something nice for you to have to remember me by. Did you read any of them?” she asks, hopefully, turning around to give Laura her privacy for changing clothes.

“I read all of them, actually.’ Laura’s face turns pink.

“What was your favorite?” Carmilla asks and it’s a shame unto the world that no one was around to see Carmilla’s smile. “Did you read my notes?”

“Those were probably the best parts. They helped everything to make a lot more sense. I can’t believe that you have actually met so many of those famous people.” Laura taps the vampire’s shoulder to give her permission to turn around. “My favorite was probably “Bridge to Terabithia”. I identify so hard with the entire book.”

“It’s sad but powerful.” Carmilla agrees.

“Just like you.” Laura adds, looking meaningfully at Carmilla. 

“What makes you say that?” Carmilla asks, whipping around in surprise from where she was taking herself on a tour of Laura’s dorm-room. The little human made herself comfortable in her nest of blankets.

“You have old, sad eyes, you’ve lost so much but you are never willing to talk about it. You’re old, sad and powerful, and I wouldn’t have you any other way. You are the one who is going to get me through this.” Laura’s eyes are beginning to regain their sparkle at last, and it feels as though a large weight has been lifted off of Carmilla’s chest.

“I think that...eventually, you are going to be okay, with or without me.” Carmilla decides. “What happened to your roommate, Poptart?” she notices that there are two beds but only one student.

“She transferred to Princeton.” Laura answers in confusion.

“Well, according to the list of jobs that you have given me, it’s my duty to protect you until you are able to take care of yourself.” Carmilla reminds her. “I’m your new roommate, cutie.” she’s smirking and her eyes are twinkling in a manner that Laura had never seen out of her before. They were coal black as usual, the kind of dark eyes that belied no secrets, but were playful and mischievous, the way that Laura would have imagined them being Carmilla was alive. 

“This oughta be interesting.” Laura groaned.

\-----/////-----

“Turn at the hips, it’s where all of your power is going to be coming from.” Carmilla coaches, one hand on each of Laura’s hips, pulling her in the direction that she needs to go.

“This is a lot more work than I actually thought that it was going to be.” Laura groans, sweat rolling down her neck and shoulders. 

“Anything that is worth knowing will take time to learn, Creampuff.” Carmilla advises, note really of any help whilst wearing her workout clothes. This consists of a sports bra and yoga pants with compression shorts on underneath. Laura hadn’t ever seen Carmilla without jeans and a t-shirt on before she had set up these three times a week training sessions.

Her hair was tied up in a high ponytail and she looked every inch your typical college girl, only muscular and with perfect technique in nearly every martial art. Plus, extra super hot in Laura’s terms. She punched the bag again and tried to remind herself that she and the vampire were nothing but friends, that she and the vampire were of two different species, and that she was basically Carmilla’s mistress according to every text that she had read on the subject of summoning of vampires.

“Can you talk or something while we do this? It’s much too quiet.” Laura complains, doing her assigned sets of ‘jab-cross’ punches.

“As long you maintain the rhythm that you have going . What would you like for me to talk about?” Carmilla asks serenely.

“People who’ve summoned you before, your life when you were alive, some of your more interesting adventures, anything will be nice.” Laura grunts, rolling her wrist as she punches.

“HIt with your first two knuckles.” Carmilla corrects her with a calm tune for what feels like the one millionth time.

“Yeah.” Laura pictured a mugger, a bad guy...him on the punching bag and the force behind her punches increased even as her arms wore out.

“Careful.” was all that Carmilla had to say about it.

“I was a young vampire, only seventy or so. I had stuck around my hometown for a while to take care of my family and my estate from afar.” she began and Laura focused on the sound of her soft, silky, and calm voice to keep the darkness in her mind at bat. It seemed as though the rest of the world began to slip away. There was only Carmilla and the rhythmic beat of her fists on the bag.

“I had kept a particular eye on my youngest sister, the next Countess Karnstein, who had done surprisingly well in my place. She was reaching her fifties, having been born when I was already a young lady with better things to do than attend a baby girl. After my death I began to deeply regret not spending more time with her. Rumors still circulated even then of what had become of me. I had become a nun, run away with a lover, my parents were ashamed of my sexual preference for the fairer sex and had locked me away, you know, the usual.” Carmilla flashed Laura a fanged grin and nearly made her fall over.

“The stories had gotten worse and worse until they finally decided, around fifteen years after my parent’s death I think, I lost track of time around then, that I had to have been either a witch, along the same lines as yourself, or a vampire, as I actually am.” Carmilla kicks Laura’s foot to tell her to move it back. “For some reason that really crawled under my sister’s skin, I don’t know why, we had barely known one another over the course of our natural lives. Still, she rose up in the defense of my memory. I, watching her from afar, was so touched by the idea that I wrote her a letter, backdated it, and put it where she would definitely eventually find it the next time that she went through my things. That, Lauronica Mars, is one of my most treasured memories. It seemed to me to be one of the more pleasant ones to share with you.” Carmilla finished as Laura reached the end of her set.

“That was...actually… really sweet.” Laura pants, her hands on her knees.

“Stand up or you’ll blow chunks. Come on, let’s get you some water.” Carmilla slips an arm around Laura’s waist and helps her to the bench where all of their things sat in a heap.

“Thank you, for all of this.” Laura says once she is breathing normally again.

“It’s just orders.” Carmilla grumbles.

“True, but you’re sweet to me and I didn’t order you to be sweet. You do that all on your own. You can’t pull the rough and tough and hard to bluff wool over my eyes.” Laura leans into Carmilla’s side.

“I am rough, and tough, and hard to bluff though. Good heavens, cutie. I’m a vampire who has lived for centuries and eats people to stay alive.” Carmilla corrects her.  
“Quit pretending that you don’t care about me! It’s useless and obvious! You have been a friend to me ever since my mother died. I value that too much for you to cheapen it.” Laura jumps up to yell and Carmilla takes the opportunity to look her over, like she has gotten into the habit of doing.

Her Creampuff had grown up well, despite all of her hardships. No longer was she the cute little kid that the vampire had taken pity on so many years ago. This girl… this young woman was filled in in all of the right places, and eyes that glitter with fire. Still, she was decorated with deep fading bruises along her arms around her throat. There was a deep seated anger in her that she couldn’t seem to shake. If Carmilla touched her without her expecting it, or move suddenly, Carmilla could see the fear tremble through Laura like a breaking wave.

“You’re right.” she says, interrupting Laura’s rant that she had tuned out of ages ago.

“You’re right, I do care about you.” Carmilla repeats herself. Laura stares at her before gesturing for the older woman to continue. “I’ve seen you grow up into a gorgeous young lady right before my eyes. You’ve gotten so strong, not even just on the outside, though that has improved a lot under my tutelage as well.” Carmilla sighs and lets her hair down. “I don’t see how I could possibly not care. You’re the first person who has given a damn about me in centuries. You’re smart and beautiful and loving. Of course I care, but I am still a vampire, a blood sucking creature creature of the night who can rip out the throat of an innocent in a heartbeat and drain them dry. You were the exception that proved my rule.” 

“Well, I think that you’re better than that. I think that there is more humanity in you than you would ever care to admit.” Laura strikes back as Carmilla stands up to pace. This isn’t the way that she was wanting this argument to go at all. “You aren’t like the rest of your kind, believe me. I’ve met a few over the past year and a half. None of them would have beaten someone as opposed to killing them because they cared about my soul, my innocence. They wouldn’t have been filled with a righteous anger because of what happened to me this past year.” Laura backs Carmilla up with each step that accompanies each phrase. “They definitely wouldn’t have helped me with my homework or given me books to read. You’re different from the rest of your kind and that is a good thing. An important thing. You have allowed love back into your life, Carm.” Laura places a hand over Carmilla’s unbeating heart and, who reaches up to hold it there. Laura has her pinned up against the wall breathing heavily, and without even stopping to think about it, Carmilla’s summoner leaned in and kissed her. Suddenly, Carmilla’s whole world, three hundred years of life experiences drifted away, leaving nothing but the woman, a woman who was finally getting to kiss the girl that she liked. Laura jumped away when she felt a twitch underneath the hand on Carmilla’s chest.

“What was that?!” she asks, eyes wide and nervous.

“It’s called kissing Pumpkin, but you should know that because you started it.” Carmilla looks rather put out.

“No, not that, that.” Laura points to Carmilla’s chest. She grabs her hand and places it over the spot. “Feel?” 

“Oh, my God. That shouldn’t be happening. That can’t be happening.”

“But it is. We should go check on your seal in my room. Come on.” Laura says, packing up her things.

“I can’t dematerialize, or make fire, or go into cat form.” carmilla tells her. Carmilla tells her.

“Well, we’ll just have to run then.”

 

“My top speed is at average for a physically fit human.” Carmilla says, looking mildly desperate, as she follows Laura. Once they are there, Laura yanks away the area rug only to find the seal gone.

“I’m human. Kissing you made me human. I haven’t been human in a very long time. I don’t even remember how to be human.” Carmilla sinks onto the bed looking shell shocked. “I don’t understand.”

“Let me do some research. I’m sure that I can find something.” Laura looks worriedly at Carmilla.

“Don’t bother. I’ve read those tomes a hundred times over. You won’t find anything. I know what’s happened. I’m just having trouble believing it.” Carmilla says with a sigh as Laura abandons her book and sits down next to Carmilla, leaning into her side.

“What’s wrong?” Laura asked.

“Absolutely nothing, and that’s the issue. You’ve released me from the Holde.” Carmilla answers. “Well, we have released me.”

“How did we do that? It doesn’t make any sense. None of the books that I have read implied that the Holde was anything less than permanent.”

“It’s very rare, but the Holde is released until one of the entities bound by it acquries a soul.” Carmilla beats around the bush. She doesn’t want Laura to know any more, buts she knows that the girl won’t stop until she has all of the answers that she wants.

“And how did you gain a soul? You weren’t doing anything but...oh.” Laura arrives to the answer on her own.

“The only way to get a soul is to fall in love. Kissing the one that you love for the first time has a certain power to it.”

“You say that like it’s a death sentences.” Laura chuckles darkly.

“It is. I was immortal before.” Carmilla replies and Laura’s eyes go wide.

“I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay. this will be much more merciful than having to watch you grow old and die while I continue to live on. I don’t want to live in a world without you in it.” Carmilla says and Laura’s eyes fill with tears.

“You love me?”

“Yeah.” 

Laura didn’t say it back, but Carmilla hadn’t really expected her to. She was a former vampire, she had centuries worth of patience to draw on. For now, this was enough. She knew that Laura cared, that much was obvious, and Carmilla could always hang on to that.

“Stop it.” Laura said, almost playful again.

“Stop what?” Carmilla asks, an almost smile on her face. 

“Stop it with the seduction eyes.” 

“Why, are they working?”

“They always work, that’s the issue.”


	68. Wishing

“I wish that we could stay like this forever.” I say, my voice muffled u the thick black hair that I have buried my face in.

“Me too, Cupcake. Me too.” Carmilla grees. She and I both know that that won’t be happening but it’s a nice thought.

\------/////-------

I wish that I could take back half of what I had said now. I was totally unfair. Of course Carmilla doesn’t want to betray her sister. That makes sense on so many levels. I was mean and unfair and I don’t know how to fix it. She was so angry. I was so angry. Emotions were running high and now it’s over. It’s hard to believe that we were happy and together only a few nights ago.

\-----/////-----

I wish that I hadn’t eaten so much ice cream. I wish that I hadn’t cried so hard. Carmilla will be able to tell. I wonder how cold I can get the shower to run?

\-----/////-----

I wish that I had run away with her when I had had the chance.

\-----/////-----

I wish that Carmilla had never told me Mattie’s secret. I wish that I didn’t care so much. I wish that everything were different, but mostly I wish that I could understand why I can’t do anything right.


	69. Gam-Gam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura has an overly supportive grandmother.

I have told Gam-Gam several times to stay out of my love life. I know that it sounds odd for someone to have to tell their grandmother to butt out, but my Gam-Gam is not an ordinary granma. Mine is rather spunky about stuff like that, she really wants me to meet the perfect woman, because she really wants me to be happy. Unlike most older people my Gam-Gam has been very accepting, almost too accepting. As a way of showing this, she regularly tries to set me up with almost every girl that she or I knows.

“Gam-Gam, you have to stop. I don’t really want to meet anyone right now. My life is going really well, even with the lack of romance.” I demand.

“But she’s a musician and she’s really attractive. If I were young again, I would totally hit that.” Gam-Gam says with a half-smirk.

“Ew no, I don’t want to think about you hitting anything...or anyone. Just, no.” I say with a shudder.

“Just look.” Gam-Gam holds up her phone that she really was much too old to be using as well as she did. On the screen was a very very attractive girl with long raven hair and black on black on black clothes. An electric bass guitar was flung over her back carelessly as she leaned against a baby grand piano. Carmilla Karnstein...she was beautiful in that way that says that she really doesn’t care about her looks. She had beautifully intelligent eyes, they hinted at secrets and deep deep knowledge. I definitely wanted to get to know this girl.

“Yeah, okay, Gams. You hit the jackpot on this one.”

“The show’s tonight, if you’re interested.” she says with a smirk.

“I am definitely interested.”


	70. Windows

All that I actually want in the world, for the next ten years, is to sleep. Sleep would be so great after a long day… a long week, actually of chasing stories. No one wants to talk to an amateur journalist, and it’s really hard to stop being an amateur journalist until you get stories. However, this wasn’t about to happen while Carmilla Karnstein across the hall was blasting some kind of awful rock music as loudly as it would go. It was completely impossible to sleep through and I felt the bass literally thumping in my chest.

It was almost a pain when I forced myself out of the bed and across the floor to finally face the seemingly nocturnal beast. This was the third time this week that she had kept me awake, and the first two times I had allowed her to get away with it. Now, I was ridiculously angry, tired, and for some reason like I just needed a really good cry. I do tend to get teary when I’m exhausted. But, I’m still much too irritated to keep from stomping off to attack her. I mean talk to her.

So, that’s how at 2 AM I ended up banging on her door in my flannel p.j.s.

“Karnstein! Open up!” the door swings open while I’m mid-knock.

“Have you finally decided to woman up and join the party? Good for you, cutie. The outfit could use some work though. This isn’t a pajama party.” Carmilla snipes.

“You know that that isn’t why I’m here.” I growl. “I need to sleep. I have several deadlines coming on.”

That did not come out sounding nearly as badass as I had hoped. It sounded a whole lot more like begging to me. Still, I desperately needed sheep...I mean sleep.

“If you don’t let me get some sleep, I swear that I am going to end up accidentally killing somebody, or dying myself. I don’t work well on little to no sheep...I mean sleep.”

What am I doing? Carmilla is so much more distracting when I am killing myself with overwork and am extremely exhausted. She is killing me, really. It’s her fault. All her fault.

“Why should I care that you aren’t getting any sleep, how is this not going to benefit me?”

“Why should it benefit you?” I ask, getting more and more confused.

“Girls who are exhausted are much more likely to make mistakes that work to my favor.” Carmilla.

“I take it that you know that from experience. I have no idea why you think that this would work on my inparticular though. I am pretty much known for being able to resist almost anything.” I snort.

“I am pretty much known for being irresistible.” Carmilla’s mouth turns up into a half smile, a teasing look that could drop almost anyone’s panties. She stalks forward from where she leaned against the doorframe, she was wearing her usual leather pants that drove me nuts on the average day and insane on this particular one. It felt like my heart had quit beating inside of my chest. I choked on my own breath.

“Carmilla, stop.” I barely manage to say. I didn’t want her to stop though. I wanted to see where this would lead. She backs me up against my apartment door and pins me there. My chest shuddered.

“Are you sure about that?” she asks, tilting her eyes down at me.

“Yes...no… I don’t know.” I stutter.

“Alright, I’ll kick everyone out, come back over, and help you to bed. You’re about to fall over or pass out one. I just want to make sure that you don’t keel over and die or something.” she presses her lips gently to mine and carries me over to the couch before making a graceful exit. I don’t remember how I made it into bed.


	71. Cookies

“Carmilla! Where are my cookies?!” I yell from the little kitchenette in our dorm to where the vampire was hiding out in the bathroom, probably clogging the drain up again.

She doesn’t answer but I can hear a snort that means that she definitely ate them. I roll my eyes and groan. I really should be used to this nonsense. I had just gotten back from class and literally all that I wanted in the world was a cookie. Where were my cookies? The lazy ass vampire had eaten them.

“Vampire! Come on, you’re coming with me to buy more.” I order. I was losing my temper and being kind of crazy, I know, but at this point I was beyond caring.

“No thanks, I’m good. I’ve already had some.” she grumbles as a response.

I look out of the window and realize that it’s dark outside.

“I’m not accepting that answer.” I announce before I barge into the bathroom, and drag Carmilla out by her ear. She’s only half of the way dressed, and her hair is still damp. I shove a hoodie into her arms and escort her out of the dorm room. By the time we are out of the building she’s covered up.

“You do realize that I am a centuries old vampire, right? I could rip you into tiny itty bitty bite sized pieces.” she growls.

“I don’t care.” I reply, and I am telling truth. I also know that she would never hurt me. I don’t know why I know that, but I am completely sure.

“Hop on, you’re pedaling.” I announce. pointing to my bicycle.

“You’re killing me, Hollis.” Carmilla groans, but straddles the bicycle anyway. I hop up onto the handlebars, and grin. I can see why she enjoys winning these little bouts so much now.

“How? You’re already dead.” I laugh, and she pedals us to the cafe, a tiny and cozy place where students go to hang out in the quiet, study, or eat.

“Nope. We’re going home. It’s couple’s night.” Carmilla starts to turn around.

“Cookies, Karnstein.” I say with a glare.

“Fine.” she follows me in while I take a deep breath of the warm cookie, hot chocolate, and books smell.

“How could you not love this place?” I ask with a happy sigh. Books line the walls, a display case against one holds yummy goodies and live music plays from the dais. In-love couples cuddle on the comfy couches and chairs.

“Easily. Especially with all of this disgusting canoodling.” Carmilla answers, tugging gently on my ponytail.

“Let’s find snacks.” I say with a light smile, and grab Carmilla’s hand to drag her along. We are intercepted on our mission by Wilson Kirsch in a bright red polo and a grin three miles wide.

“Hey there, how long have the two of you been together? I had no idea.” he asks, completely oblivious. I’m about to say that of course we aren’t together when Carmilla interrupts and wraps an arm comfortably around my shoulders.

“Almost a month. Where have you been?” Carmilla lies and my eyes go wide. I’m about to protest, and loudly so when the lying vampire in question points covertly to a sign over at the display counter.

“Free Valentine Cookies to Loving Couples  
In Need Of Home”

That explains it. She’s trying to get out of paying for my treats.

“That’s sweet.” he says. “Grab a plate. The games are going to start in a minute.”

“Games?” Carmilla’s face falls. Oh, this would be pretty good.

“Let’s go...honey.” I say with an almost laugh and wrap my arm around her waist. I smirk proudly.

“Welcome to… The Newly Couples Game! The goal is to answer the most questions about your partner correctly as you can. Miss three and you’re out.” Kirsch instructs from the front of the room. I sit beside of Perry and LaFontaine, with Carmilla, doing my best to ignore their surprised glances. I pick up the pair of white boards and pass one to Carm who is definitely mid-sulk.

“They’re all going to know that we’re lying when we lose.” she protests.

“You don’t seem to realize how much we actually know about one another. We’ve lived together for a while now.” I snort as the game begins.

“What is your partner’s least favorite thing about you?” Kirsch asks and everyone ducks down to write. THis is in reference to Partner A, who in our case, was Carmilla. I already know that we are going to be on the same page for this one.

“Are we all set? Okay, show your answers in 3...2...11” Kirsch calls and Carmilla mutters. “I didn’t know that he could even count that high.”

Teams LaFerry and Hollistein both moved on to the next question. Carmilla and I both answered with my hatred of her incredible inability to pick up after herself. I give her a bold ‘I told you so!’ look.

“I told you that we could be good at this.” 

“And now for your partner.” Kirsch gives the four of us a proud look as LaF and Perry high-five over their recklessness.

Now, Carmilla tends to be very easily annoyed by me, so I actually had to think about this one even as she immediately scrawled out her answer. She did tend to get the most annoyed whenever I asked her to do literally anything, so I wrote ‘demanding’ as my answer, just in time for the buzzer.

“Cutting it close, Cupcake.” Carmilla tells me with a low whistle. I’m surprised to see her so invested in this game.

“What can I say? You find me really aggravating.” I scoff. “Narrowing down the possibilities got tedious.” and she gives me this look that I can’t quite read. I shove that to the back of my mind for later consideration.

“Right.” she says softly.

“3...2...1.” Kirsch calls, he’s the kind of guy who loves these cheesy sorts of games.

“What’d you put?” Carmilla asks as we hold up the dry erase boards.

“Demanding.’ You?” I ask though I am a bit scared of the answer.

“Bossy. Close enough I guess.” I can detect the barest hint of a smile.

“I am not bossy.” I protest.

“You literally forced me to come here with you.” she retorts.

“Because you ate all of my cookies and you owe me more. We both know that if I had just asked for more cookies, you would never have gotten them.” I argue. We’re bickering like an old married couple, and we aren’t even together. How ridiculous is this?”

“Um, little nerd hottie? You’re scaring people.” Kirsch says quietly, and Carmilla laughs… a rare sound indeed.

“Have a cookie, Sundance.” she holds one up to me.

“Shut up.” I say, but eat the cookie anyway.

“You’re going to give yourself diabetes.” Carmilla grumbles.

“Awh, you do care.” I say sarcastically.

“Every now and then.” she replies and i can tell by the timbre of her voice that she is actually being sincere. The notion is rather oddly heartwarming. When Kirsch asks, we both correctly answer Carmilla’s favorite color as red.

“What happened to the old ‘devil may care’ Carmilla?” I ask, no longer paying much attention to anybody else.

“She met someone who changed her mind.” the vampire answered, looking up at the stage.

“Oh, really? Who might that be?” I ask, pretending to not be hoping for her to mean me.

“The world’s most ridiculous little wannabe Veronica Mars.” she snorts.

“And what did she do?” I ask again, egging her on to get to her point. I can feel my heart jumping up into my throat.

“I bet that you could guess.” Carmilla smiles her half smile and her voice drops to low and sultry mode. It sends shivers down my spine and makes me think of the stars and candles, champagne and chocolate...amongst other things.

I can feel her intent like a roaring sound in my ears as she leans in and I feel her nose brush against mine. As soon as she makes contact, I grab a fistful of her hair and her forearm. Kissing Carmilla is everything that I had daydreamed and more. Her hair is silky between my fingers and her lips are soft against my own. she is fire and ice all at one time. It was just like kissing a hurricane.

She let go with a soft sigh and I shudder. My whole body trembled and Carmilla stared up at me wide eyed. She is cupping my face with one hand and her other arm is wrapped around my waist. She smiled then and it hit me that we were still in the cafe kissing in public.

“shit.”


	72. Camp

I didn’t know why I ended up at camp again, at thirty years old. I am much too old to be a camp counselor. The kids are going to think that I am a total grandma. I was worried when I went into all of this. Mimsy, the lady that runs the place was really good to me after my mother died and my father sent me to camp.

I don’t think that my dad could handle seeing me until he had been coping with it for a bit. I don’t think that he could grieve with me there. Then again, that summer I met my first best friend. I also met the same girl that I had my first kiss with. I was hoping to just relax this summer. This entire year had been an incredibly awful nightmare, that I just couldn’t seem to handle. Maybe my dad and I just can’t handle things. It takes a minute.

What definitely didn’t help was walking into the camp counselor’s quarters and seeing Carmilla Karnstein standing there. It was a flash back to the past, and nice, though mildly painful. It had killed me to see her never turn up to camp again. I went every single summer until I was fifteen, hoping to see her again. It broke my heart a little bit.

I just stood there for a while, my mouth hanging open like a jackass. It took about the same amount of time for her to turn around as it did for me to close my mouth. I could see the flash of recognition in her eyes. Then, I saw her almost choke to death, and return to her conversation with Mimsy. Carmilla had told me once that Mimsy had helped her out a lot as well. Things had ended on a high note, her racing from her driver’s car to kiss me, full on on the lips and running back.

It didn’t feel like an ending, more like an almost. It felt like something had been left off in the middle of a sentence. I kept watching, because that is exactly what Carmilla Karnstein does to me. I can’t stop watching her. I have never been able to keep from watching her. That’s why I recognized the look on her face even after 18 years of separation. That lit up look that meant that she was about to do something totally and completely nuts.

Carmilla turned on the spot, in the middle of the sentence. She ran, the way that she did a very long time ago, and raced towards me. She knocked me breathless when she grabbed me up around the waist, lifted me up into the air and kissed me till the world melted away and I thought that I might pass out.


	73. Flash

“Carmilla Karnstein, I swear to God. If I have to race you out of danger one more time I am going to...actually, I have no idea what I will do, but I promise that I will do it.“ Laura yells at the older woman dressed in blue.

“I'm a cop. I run towards danger. You're going to have to get used to that, Crimson Streak and if you want me to trust you, you're going to have to take off that ridiculous mask.“ she replies. Carmilla's natural curiosity is telling her to just rip the piece of fabric right off of the tiny girl's face.

“Ew, no. That makes me sound like a U by Kotex commercial. Try again. Just know that if you're ever in danger, I will be there in a flash.” on impulse, Laura darts forward and presses her lips to the detective’s.

“Flash. “ Carmilla mutters to herself in a dazed voice.


	74. Nice Try

She had been hiding for almost six hours. Yeah, that's right, six hours and Laura Hollis’ legs were cramping from being in the cupboard for so long. Still, she knew that her lazy ass vampire roommate would have to be home soon and when she did arrive, Laura would be ready.

Carmilla got home when Laura was just about to give up. She immediately flopped onto her bed and it was ten minutes before she realized that she hadn't heard Laura at all.

“Munchkin? Where did you get to?” the vampire yells, a hint of worry in her voice.

The young journalist almost snickers, then realizes that her legs are numb. Instead of panicking she listens to Carmilla grumbling.   
“You do realize that I'm a vampire with super hearing, right?” she snorts, opening up the wardrobe where Laura was hiding. Instead of jumping up to scare her roommate as intended, the future journalist just tumbled out. 

“You're insane, cutie. Nice try. “


	75. Secret

“Why won't you tell me what you're going to wear? It’s our WEDDING for Pete's sake!” Laura protests. She has her own outfit picked out already and she's super excited about it. She wants to gush about it to Carmilla and daydream about her fiancee in her outfit, standing at the altar.

“Come on, baby girl. It's gonna be a surprise. It adds a bit of mystery.” Carmilla teases. 

“I have learned to dislike surprises, Carm. Unless it's like, a striptease or something.” Laura sidles up to Carmilla's side.

Carmilla tilts her head down to press her lips to Laura's, completely wiping the younger woman's mind of all thoughts of the wedding. Her deep gasp almost makes Carmilla laugh when she lets go. She loves the effect that she knows she has on her tiny fiancee.

“Can I keep my secret if I put on a striptease for the honeymoon?”


	76. Diabetes

Carmilla raced after Will and came back looking tired and stressed, but satisfied. Then she looked at me with something like worry in her eyes. She sat on the bed beside of me hesitantly. It really freaked me out.

“We need to get you to the doctor... soon. “ Carmilla informs her. 

“You bit me.” Laura states dimly.

“Yes, and I learned a lot from that, like the fact that we are going to the doctor first thing after we get cleaned up. You're still in your pajamas and I'm covered in blood.” Carmilla orders in that no nonsense tone of hers.

“Why are we going to the doctor? You didn't bite me that hard. You bit me pretty hard, but not that hard.“ Laura says in a tone that makes her sound pretty stoned. 

“You, darling, are nigh on diabetic. You need iron, or insulin, or something. I could taste the difference. It's pretty serious.” 

“Awh, you do care.” the future journalist snorts, and wobbles as she tries to stand. Carmilla's arm is around her waist before she has a chance to fall.

“Only on occasion.” Carmilla chuckles. “Screw getting ready.” she changes shirts. “We go now.”

Laura presses her lips to the vampire’s quickly. “Thank you, for all of this.”

“If that's going to be the reward, I will rescue you whenever you like.”


	77. More Tired Laura

As previously expected, it was really freaking hard to catch a super thief, if that was even the appropriate term. If there even is an appropriate term for someone like that. Carmilla ‘Kitty’ Karnstein, she poofs in and out of places like she was never there and probably the world’s best thief. I would almost admire her, if I wasn’t assigned to her case. Instead she both frustrated and fascinated me in being incredibly hard to catch.

I usually appreciated a hard case but, Carmilla’s case was dragging on and I was getting tired of spending my nights looking for someplace that she might be and spending my days planning, negotiating, and dectiving. All I want in the world is some sleep, but now I really have to find her. I’m at the point in my life and in this case where I have to catch her just to get the higher ups off of my case. I was hoping to finally get her at the gallery opening tonight. 

There would be a lot of expensive and beautiful art there and that was definitely Kitty’s modus operandi. She had a thing for art, old or surprising beautiful. It was the sort of thing that I was kind of beginning to respect in her. I was beginning to kind of hate myself for it. I felt like screaming. That was when I noticed her, standing in the doorway, all long dark hair and leather jacket.

“I hear that you’ve been looking for me. Got a name, Cupcake?” she asked.

“That’s Detective Cupcake to you, and I would put down money that you already know.” I reply, not really feeling like dealing with the snarkathon that I knew I was in for.

“Yeah, Detective Hollis, I know your name...and you birthdate, and your blood type. I also know your order at the coffee shop around the corner from your apartment and your favorite color, but then again, I wasn’t planning on bragging.” she pushes up off of the doorframe that she had been leaning against and slowly starts to walk towards me. I didn’t know if I should be really turned on, really scared, or really angry.

“If you are so invested in learning about me, why don’t we take a ride together, Kitty? You can learn everything that you want to know on the way down to the station.” I offer matching her smirk for smirk.

“I’ll pass on your kind offer, but thank you, Detective Cupcake.”

“Just come with me. I’m tired of this cat and mouse game. I set up a clever trap. You find an even more clever way to escape. What is it this time? A trick tile in the floor? In the ceiling? Do you have one of your little friends disguised as a bodyguard. Or is it all of the above? My brain is fried. Aren’t you getting tired of it too? Your skin is even more pale than usual and you have never been one to slouch. Let’s just throw in the towel together and I will do my best to get you as good of a deal as I can. I’ll sign you up for helping me out and living in an apartment. I’m joining an FBI taskforce against art thieves as soon as I am able to bring you in. It’s a sweet gig for both of us. No high security prison for you and a pay raise for me. What do you say?” I’m begging now. I don’t beg.

“I have really gotten into your head, haven’t I?” she says thoughtfully, searching my face for any sign that I’m lying. I feel like she hasn’t just gotten into my head, but taken it over. I have spent so much time trying to understand her that it’s like I have partially become her. I don’t know where she starts and I end.

“Yeah.” I admit half-heartedly. “And it’s killing me.”

“I can tell. Sure then, I’ll let you take me in, just so long as you can get me that deal you were talking about. Otherwise I’m going to break right out.” she tells me seriously before dragging me into a hug.

“Of that I have no doubt.”


	78. Scary Movie

Carmilla had had a plan. It was a really good plan to. It had worked on other girls, but then again, she should have realized that Laura Hollis was definitely not anything at all like other girls. Carmilla’s plan failed...completely and utterly. 

The plan had been to get Laura closer by watching a scary movie. The stereotypical teen romance regularly starts with cuddling when a girl gets scared at a scary movie, right? And Carmilla herself was completely confident that she was much scarier than anything that a movie had to offer. Laura got scared, completely as planned. She even got under the same blanket as Carmilla. Still, by the middle of the movie, Laura was on the far end of the couch from the vampire, almost completely hidden underneath the blanket. One more jump scare and Carmilla thought that the girl might pass out.

“Why would you watch this? What is wrong with people who think that this is a good time?” she complains.

“I don’t know. Maybe people think that it’s a good excuse to hide under the arm of someone bigger and stronger. It’s what happens in all of the stupid teenage movies.” Carmilla mutters a reply, not really intending for Laura to hear her.

“Is that what all of this was about? Were you trying to make a move on me, Ms. Karnstein?” Laura laughs awkwardly.

“Do you still not understand flirting when you see it, Hollis?”

“When are you going to understand that I am one of the single most obtuse people in the universe, Carm? If you want to be my big scary vampire protector.... knock yourself out.” Laura pats the couch beside of her, and Carmilla slides over, wrapping an arm around the younger woman’s shoulders and pulling her in. It wasn’t another twenty minutes before the movie was completely forgotten and Laura was distracted by her hands in Carmilla’s hair and the softness of their lips moving against one anothers’ in a way that meant nothing more than home.


	79. Love

“You know, Carmilla. I never thought that I would have to remind you of why I love you and I’m sorry that I ever let you forget about it.” Laura says softly, tucking a loose strand of raven black hair behind the vampire’s ear.

“You’re amazing, Laura. So bright and full of life. That’s one of several thousand reasons for why I fell in love with you. But me, I’m broken. I’m several centuries old and I constantly have these mood swings. I’m mean sometimes and sweet the next. I know that you know it. I don’t know how you can stand it. I don’t know how you can stand me.” Carmilla says.

“I adore you, and not because of any lingering her worship that I have. I love you because you are brave and strong. I love you because you loved me first. I love you because you are willing to kill for me. You’re kind when you think that nobody is going to notice.” Laura says in reply because she does notice. She does notice everything that Carmilla does because her eyes can’t help but to follow her everywhere that she goes. “I love you and only you. Nothing is ever going to change that. Trust me.”

“Thank you.” Carmilla says, whispering into her shoulder. She kisses the place where Laura’s neck meets her shoulder and the place where her jaw meets her neckline. “I love you more than I have words for.”


	80. Cold Hands

“Laura Hollis, I swear that it looks to me like your entire body is turning blue. You’ve seriously got to get into the warm somewhere.” Carmilla tells me, as I try to shake some feeling back into the tips of my purple fingers. 

“You...you’ve got no idea. My...my hands. I can’t feel them.” I groan, kind of. The rest of my body aches with the cold. The rest of the team seems to be about to give out as well. We need somewhere to stay and it looks like the rest of the world is white with snow and ice. Carmilla grabbed my hands in her own and held them tightly against her chest. They burned like fire with warmth from her, disproving the myths of vampires being constantly cold. 

“I should go find somewhere for us to stay. Out of the cold. Before one of you actually dies.”

“That would be good, but right now I’m pretty sure that you are the actual only thing that is keeping me up right now.” I lean in into her

“Alright, cutie. That is it.” she says rather definitely. 

“You guys, stay where I can find you. Huddle for warmth. I don’t want to have to deal with the blowback of the Cupcake’s heart getting crushed when you die.” she turns back to me. 

“You’re coming along.” she bends at the knees and lifts to pick me up and I start to shake as feeling returns to my appendages.

“Oh, God, thank you. Who knew that you were so warm…”I shimmy into her shoulder.

“Um, well, I guess not you. Is that...like a barn over there?” Carmilla asks, and I’m not really paying attention anymore because I am enjoying being close to her.

In a flash, Carm has set me down in a stack of hay somewhere in the barn and it’s the warmest that I have felt in ages. It’s the warmest that I have felt since we went out into the blizzard at least I guess. It was only a bit before Carmilla had come back with LaFontaine and Perry. Each sighed heavily in relief. Carmilla wrapped her arms around me and I sighed too, but maybe for different reasons. I loved her still, I think. I lean into her and it feels like home, but still when I kiss her it cracks me open.


	81. Love

“You know, Carmilla. I never thought that I would have to remind you of why I love you and I’m sorry that I ever let you forget about it.” Laura says softly, tucking a loose strand of raven black hair behind the vampire’s ear.

“You’re amazing, Laura. So bright and full of life. That’s one of several thousand reasons for why I fell in love with you. But me, I’m broken. I’m several centuries old and I constantly have these mood swings. I’m mean sometimes and sweet the next. I know that you know it. I don’t know how you can stand it. I don’t know how you can stand me.” Carmilla says.

“I adore you, and not because of any lingering her worship that I have. I love you because you are brave and strong. I love you because you loved me first. I love you because you are willing to kill for me. You’re kind when you think that nobody is going to notice.” Laura says in reply because she does notice. She does notice everything that Carmilla does because her eyes can’t help but to follow her everywhere that she goes. “I love you and only you. Nothing is ever going to change that. Trust me.”

“Thank you.” Carmilla says, whispering into her shoulder. She kisses the place where Laura’s neck meets her shoulder and the place where her jaw meets her neckline. “I love you more than I have words for.”


	82. Hands

Laura was fascinated by Carmilla’s hands. Long after they were sated and sleepy, she would aly and play with her vampire girlfriend’s fingers. She thought that they were beautiful and delicate. These were hands that had existed for three centuries. They had done and seen so much.

These were hands that had embroidered with a tiny needle as a little girl. They had made tiny knots to form beautiful designs. These were hands by which Carmilla had been led to dance at balls. These knuckles on these fingers had been kissed by suitors. Now, these were vampiric undead hands.

These hands were violent. They had crushed, punched, and ripped. They had been drenched in blood up to the elbows. Carmilla had killed with these hands. These hands had seen too much. 

They were surprisingly gentle. Her fingertips danced along Laura’s spine softly. She had stroked laura’s face with a brush of the back of her hand. Carmilla traced loving messages upon Laura’s skin with the nail of her index, raising gooseflesh with each touch. These hands were magic.

Laura saw redemption and love in each line, flaw, and tiny scar. These fingers had pleasured her for hours on end. These hands brought her cocoa when she was up late working. They had protected her. These hands loved her.


	83. February Air

“Carm, this is literally the worst time of year to go to the beach. It’s freezing.” Laura complains, the ocean breeze giving off a chill.

“It’s February air. It’s refreshing.” Carmilla argues, her shoes in one hand and Laura’s hand in her other.

“You have long sleeves, my arms are cold. I’m in a dress.” the waves crash over her feet and Laura jumps up a little bit.

“Just watch, Cupcake.” Carmilla comes behind her and wraps her arms around her small human girlfriend to share warmth. With Carmilla around her, Laura settles in and enjoys the feeling.

Then the fireworks go off. The lights reflect off of the ocean, giving off a beautiful glow. Carmilla can feel Laura’s shock and smiled to herself at the mystified look in the younger girl’s eyes. She loved Laura’s sense of wonder at the world.

“They’re beautiful.” Laura says with a sigh, leaning back into her arms.

“Not as beautiful as you.” Carmilla grins.

“And you say that I’m cheesy.” Laura snorts.


	84. Supergirl AU

Laura loved the busy streets of National City on most days. However, they were a hassle when she was running late and didn’t have time to revel in the anonymity. Laura’s boss was already going to be in one of her rare vicious moods. Carmilla Karnstein was going to be expecting Laura to be waiting in front of Carmilla’s personal elevator, a piping hot latte in hand. Her latest story had been scooped by Lois Lane of Metropolis. Ms. Karnstein didn’t hate anyone for anything more than Lois Lane.

Already knowing that she was screwed Laura ducked into a deserted alley, whipped off her black framed glasses and stared pointedly at the latte until twin streaks of red jumped to life from her eyes. The latte was now the perfect temperature. She ran as fast as her legs could take her up the fire escape. Laura knew that this was an outright abuse of her abilities, but she needed this job. This job kept her human.

Just as she screeched to a halt in front of her desk, the elevator dinged.

“Ms.Karnstein, good morning. You have a 9:30 meeting with the Corvae group. Your mother has left voicemails at your desk and layouts for the fall line are on your desk.” Laura rattles off from memory.

“It’s too early for this, Creampuff. Talk to me again in an hour.” Carmilla scoffs, closing the blinds on her see through, fish-bowl of an office, presumably to sleep.

Laura trudges to her desk and collapses into the comfy leather chair.

“At least she didn’t insult your clothes today.” Perry says.

“At least.” Laura mumbles in reply, checking her phone for confirmation of a movie night with her adopted sibling, LaFontaine. Instead she found a voicemail.

“Hey Sis, sorry to cancel on such short notice, but work is sending me to a conference in Geneva for science stuff that I know you don’t actually want to hear about. I’ll call you again when I land around nine. Flight’ at 6. Love you, bye.”

Laura groans. This was the second time this month.

Work didn’t end up going any better either. After her morning nap, Carmilla had Laura running all over the building. Each time that she would finally get to sit, the boss would give her that look… like the young media mogul knew something that Laura didn’t. It didn’t help that Carmilla Karnstein was absolutely gorgeous. It was the worst crush ever.

As soon as she got home, Laura curled up on the couch, intending to mope and watch Doctor Who on Netflix. Instead she caught a glimpse of the breaking news.

“...engine blew out on flight 307 to Geneva. The pilot can’t stop the inevitable crash. Every seat from cab to cabin is filled.” the reporter said.

Laura’s heart jumped to her throat. The one person that she loved more than anyone else on this planet was on that plane. She had lost too much already in her life so far. LaFontaine wasn’t going to die too. Not so long as Laura could do something about it.

Before she knew it, Laura was standing on the balcony of her apartment building. She bent her knees experimentally a few times, her eyes on the blinking lights of the rapidly descending plane.

“LaF is going to kill me if they don’t die.” Laura mutters to herself as she backs into her apartment for a running start.

Her feet move without her permission and she jumps over the balcony, one fist pointed towards the sky. For a terrifying second she falls. It has been so long since Laura has flown that she fears that she might have forgotten how. Then she’s headed upward and her hair tie and glasses blow off. Her hair whips around her, and then she’s flying.

It doesn’t take her long to catch up to the airplane. She hefts it onto her shoulders and pushes upwards with everything she’s got. Actually, the plane is a lot lighter than she would have thought. After some thought, she carries it off and lands the thing in the river, ignoring the spotlights pointed at her as she floats up onto the wing, dripping wet. After establishing that everyone onboard was safe, Laura flies home more quickly than the helicopters can follow.

Laura has just gotten out of the shower when LaFontaine shows up at her door. She throws herself at them, her fear manifesting as affection. She hugs hard but carefully, for fear of breaking her favorite (and only) sibling on accident. LaFontaine hugs her back after a moment. They had been pretty sure that they were going to die after all. That doesn’t keep them from being angry, though.

“That was the single most idiotic, stupid and… incredibly brave things that you have ever done.” LaF says with a teary eyed and torn smile. “But there will be consequences to coming out with your powers. I will forever be thankful to you for saving my life, but people aren’t going to simply miss the fact that a flying blonde lady grabbed a falling plane out of the sky. It’s going to be all over the news; and you, Laura, work for the Queen of All Media herself, Carmilla Karnstein.

“I don’t care. I saved you, and that’s all that matters. You’re my family, LaFontaine.” Laura says, her face firm and full of determination and confidence that LaF hasn’t seen before. 

“So… flying again, how did it feel?” LaF asks, a curious grin spreading across their face. “We haven’t done that in years.”

“Amazing. Flying is the best rush in the world.” a smile spread across Laura’s face and she flopped carelessly back onto the couch as the siblings ordered pizza and celebrated living.

\-----/////-----

“Hollis! My office! Now!” Carmilla karnstein snapped her fingers as she accepted her coffee and walked right past Laura as though she didn’t even exist.

“Yes, Ms.Karnstein?” Laura watched the dark-haired woman sit at her desk as though she owned the place. (she did actually own the place)

“I’m sure that even someone such as yourself heard the airplane commotion yesterday. I want you to personally oversee the hunt for the young woman who is responsible for the rescue of all of those people. Clear my schedule for the day and get my creative team in here. I want to have a ‘Supergirl’ special edition out by tomorrow. Lois already has that ridiculous meatcake in his underpants for her Planet stories. This… ‘girl’ is mine.” Carmilla pronounces as Laura scribbles notes down an adorable crease appearing between her eyebrows.

“Supergirl, ma’am? Why ‘girl’? Wouldn’t ‘Superwoman’ be more appropriate?” Laura asks once the information has sunk in.

“What’s the problem, Cupcake? You’re taking this awfully personally.” Carmilla teases.

“Just… political reasons.” Laura stutters.

“Okay, well, I’m alright with being a girl. I’m hot, powerful, smart...and a girl. I don’t see an issue.” Carmilla lifts an eyebrow at Laura questioningly. “Any other ridiculous suppositions that I don’t actually have to answer?”

“No… no, it’s alright.” Laura answers awkwardly, a blush staining her cheeks.

“Didn’t I give you something to do, Poptart?” she asks with an eyeroll, a little bit pleased that Laura had actually spoken up for once. Carmilla’s mild-mannered assistant had a tendency to just scurry around and not draw any attention to herself. Today, Laura had shown actual backbone. It was then that the girl left quite promptly with a fresh spark of life in her eyes.

“Perry, I need to see you on the roof… now.” Laura says, dragging her friend by the arm to the staircase.

“What is going on, Laura?! Your behavior as of late…” she stutters as her best friend stands on the very edge of the building. “What are you doing?”

“You saw the news last night, right?” Laura asks, pacing along the edge of the building unhurriedly, not appearing to Perry to care that just a foot to her left was a straight job to the street, two stories below. “Supergirl, catching that falling plane? Well, I have something that I have to tell you.” 

Perry’s eyes widen. “If it’s that you’re gay, I already know.” she scoffs. “Now, please, step away from the edge.”

“No, it’s that I’m her. I’m Supergirl.” Laura says, reaching up to undo her hair and let it fall loose around her shoulders and pulls off her glasses.

“No way.” Perry shakes her head in refusal.

“Yes, way.” Laura insists and lets herself fall backwards off of the building.

“Laura!” Perry screams, rushing to look for her friend only to find her rising through the air to land in front of her.

“Believe me now?” Laura asks, a wry grin spreading across her face.

\-----/////-----

Laura took her time with the superhero thing, eventually having saved several of her friends and even Carmilla Karnstein herself a few times. The city had come to revere her and rely on her. That’s not to say that things were easy. Laura’s ass had been handed to her on several occasions and keeping her identity a secret was a struggle. Still, her job for Carmilla suffered as little as possible.

“Miss.Hollis, join me please.” Carmilla said as she drank a bourbon on the balcony one particularly late evening.

“Yes, Ms.Karnstein?” Laura asks, expecting to be asked to go fetch something.

“How old are you?” the dark-haired woman asks. Her facial expression betrays nothing of where this line of questioning might he headed.

“24, ma’am.” Laura answers, Ms.Karnstein has never asked her any personal questions before.

“Do you have any family in the area?”

“No, ma’am, but my adoptive sibling works with the FBI in a facility not too far away.” 

“You’re adopted, or they’re adopted?”

“I am, ma’am. My family died in an accident when I was thirteen. I wasn’t there.” Laura feels like this might be an interrogation of sorts.

“I’ve never tried to get to know you before. I need to fix that. Take down your hair and pull off your glasses.” the media mogul orders, her eyes going two shades darker than they had been before.

“But... ma’am, I need those to see.” Laura lies lamely, feeling an intense need to run in the pit of her stomach that made every badass alien pale in comparison.

“Do it, or I jump.” Carmilla says calmly, one palm resting on the bannister.

Laura sighs heavily knowing that LaF is going to have her head on a pike for this. Her hair sweeps down her back in ringlets, and Carmilla’s eyes are met by golden brown ones that have seen too much and have the confidence and pride of someone altogether too powerful.

“Let me start off by saying… thank you, Supergirl, on behalf of myself and the citizens of National City.” Carmilla says it gravely and with more sincerity than Laura had ever heard of her before. She steps into Laura’s space and grips her biceps.

“Let me add a thank you, Laura, as well for having never smacked me down a notch or two for the terrible things that I have said to you before I knew who you really were.” Carmilla says.

“When I’m here, Ms.Karnstein, I don’t want to be Supergirl. I need to just be Laura every now and then. That perky girl with the glasses who fetches your drinks and layouts and takes your verbal eviscerations, she’s my human side. She reminds me of why I do what I do. I have to be her to function.” Laura explains.

“I’m not going to take your job away from you, Laura, or out you to the public. I just wanted… I don’t know what I wanted, actually. Maybe I just wanted to be sure. Maybe I just wanted to be sure. Maybe I just wanted to talk. Obviously, I haven’t giving you half of the credit you deserve.” Carmilla runs a hand through long black hair.

“What do you want to know?” Laura asks giving her her kindest smile. Laura’s glad that Carmilla wants to get to know her, the real Laura, outside of either Supergirl or Laura Hollis. Carmilla smiles and she swears that it’s the first real smile that I’ve seen since I started working for her.

\-----/////-----

It’s become a part of the routine now. Everyday after work, when the rest of the office has left for the day, Laura will go into the boss’s office, let down her hair and take off her glasses. Carmilla has decided that this is the version of the girl that she likes the best. Her hair down, glasses off, but still in her work clothes. It’s like she has just gotten home from work and she is finally getting to relax. Carmilla feels that they have gotten rather… domestic. She likes it.

She was surprised as hell when one such night when they were mid-conversation, she turned around to find that she was in an empty room. She was resigning herself to the idea of having been bailed on when Supergirl came floating in through the balcony doors smelling of smoke.

“Sorry, there was a house fire.” Laura apologizes with a sad and tired smile.

“It’s fine, really. Did you get everyone out okay?” Carmilla asks and Laura’s face falls. Her head shakes back and for in a heartbroken ‘no’.

“I know that I can’t save everyone all of the time, but by Rao, that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to.” Laura sinks into the couch and cries into her hands. “I tried so hard.”

“I know you do, sweetie. I know.” Carmilla jumps from a seat across from her to beside of her, pulling the young superhero in. She sobs into Carmilla’s shirt, the tail of it wrapped up in one white-knuckled fist.

“You do so much good everyday, and you work so hard at it, at all hours of the day or night, and you’re so good at it, but even you can’t be everywhere at once. Yes, it’s terrible, and yes, it’s incredibly sad, but you did everything in your considerable power.” Carmilla pulls the young woman against her. She doesn’t say anything more and lets her cry herself out. Carmilla can’t imagine the weight of all that Laura bears.

It’s another week before Laura has it in her to come back to work. That night, when everyone else is gone Carmilla asks if she’s okay, but finds herself pressed back against her desk. Soft lips, firm and strong on her own muffle any words. Her mind goes blank and she forgets how to speak. Laura’s lips definitely don’t feel bulletproof.

“I was… only going to say ‘thank you’. I don’t know where that came from.”Laura clears her throat and blushes a deep red.

“I’m definitely willing to accept that as well.” Carmilla laughs and kisses the hero again.


	85. Cupcakes For Carmilla

“Laura, the library keeps giving us everything that we really need. You don’t have to keep experimenting with Cheeto recipes.” Carmilla scoffs when she enters their little alcove turned living room.

 

“Awh, is the tough and scary vampire worried that I’ll accidentally set the magical library on fire?” Laura asks teasingly.

 

“Why, no. The tough and scary vampire is worried that you will set yourself on fire.” Carmilla says, picking Laura up by the waist and turning the camp-stove’s burner down.

 

“You know what’s really scary, Cupcake?” Carmilla asked, setting the human girl down on the chaise and smoothing a few fly-away strands down before dropping a kiss onto the crown of her head.

 

“What?” Laura asked, looking up at Carmilla with eyes that were no longer adoring but simply affectionate and loving. Carmilla had to admit that she preferred it this way.

 

“Everything that you cook. What’s _really _scary is _everything _that you have ever cooked.” Carmilla tickles Laura’s sides gently before shoving herself away and throwing everything from the saucepan into the fire.____

____ _ _

____That was the only time that the vampire ever received a cupcake from the library._ _ _ _


	86. Hair Cut

“I find it utterly hilarious you are so good at this.” Carmilla said with a light chuckle, leaning back into Laura’s hands. “I would have been more than willing to cut my own hair, but with the reinstitution of my vampirism comes the inability to be seen in a mirror.”

“Why would you be surprised by this? I grew up with a single dad for the vast majority of my life. I had to figure out a lot of the ‘care and keeping of me’ stuff on my own. My dad’s answer to most of the growing up things was to buy me a book on it.” Laura laughed, combing her fingers through the long black hair. She could tell that Carmilla was enjoying the pampering more than she was willing to let on.

“Mmmmmhmm. That makes sense.” Carmilla murmured softly as tiny scissors snipped beside of her ears rhythmically. Laura had been cutting her hair ever since it began to grow again with the restoration of her spark. She figured this would be the last cut she would need for a good long while now that the spark was gone again. Carmilla would miss the regular appointments.

“What amazes me, is that in all of your centuries of living, you’ve never learned how to do hair...Mirrors or no. You know so many different, random, and amazing skills, but you suck at this. I kind of love it.” Laura’s voice dropped low to match Carmilla’s.

“Different...random...and amazing. I can’t help but to suspect I know exactly to which _skills_ you are referring to.” Carmilla’s voice had dropped low then in a completely different manner. 

Laura unclipped the towel that had been fastened around Carmilla’s neck and placed it carefully in the sink so as not to get hair everywhere. The vampiress stood up and turned to face her, shaking out the newly shoulder-length black locks. Laura brushed the locks behind one ear and rose up onto her tiptoes to kiss her slowly and languidly, smiling into it as though nothing in the world could phase her. Life was good and they were happy together. It was quite unusual and absolutely perfect.

“I don’t think I have ever loved you more than I do right now.” Laura said, her warm brown eyes intent upon Carmilla’s.

“You can’t be so good at hair that it makes you fall even more in love with me, can you?” Carmilla joked, her hands falling to Laura’s hips and tickling at her sides.

“I’m actually really not that great. You just make absolutely everything look good.” Laura pressed back and nipped at Carmilla’s strong, exposed collarbone.

“Even you?” Carmilla asked, a smirk pulling at her lips.

“Always me. Especially me. Me in particular.” Laura laughed happily, letting Carmilla pull her to the couch.

They collapsed into a tangle of limbs and giggles, Carmilla locked her arms around Laura’s waist as the smaller woman tucked her chin underneath Carmilla’s chin, looking for a heartbeat that wasn’t there anymore.

Carmilla noticed. “Even though I have been turned back into _this_?” she asked, her voice small and nervous.

“I’m not a particular fan of the return of your condition, but I didn’t fall in love with you as a human. I love you for who you are, who you have become….and before then I loved you for who I knew that you could be.” Laura said with full sincerity and promise. “Nothing will _ever_ change that.”


	87. Dusk

“Be careful, okay, Cupcake? This is the hour when everything comes to life.” Carmilla said as Laura tied her shoelaces to go out for her nightly run.

“You are the most romantic soul that I have ever met, Carmilla Karnstein.” Laura scoffs, standing up and loping over to her wife. “Five years later and you still get moony eyed over the witching hour. We’re safe now, Carm, safe and together, and that’s all that matters. Everything’s okay now.”

“Somehow, I’m pretty confident that no matter where we go or how long it has been since we got out of college, you will always be able to find yourself some trouble to get into.” Carmilla grinned and kissed Laura quickly. “How do you feel about pollo ranchero for dinner? I learned a really good recipe during my century in Spain.”

“Sounds great. Love you, mean it.” Laura kissed Carmilla’s forehead and ducked out of the door.


	88. Delightful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carmilla hates her mother, and her mother's boyfriend by extension, despite having never met him. He brings his daughter to dinner at Carmilla's home so as to introduce the two families

Despite her aggravation, Carmilla helped her mother set the table. She might be playing the role of the dutiful daughter of the college’s Dean tonight, but she certainly was not going to look happy about it. For the first time in a long time, some idiot had fallen for the heartsick single mother act and she had invited the man and his daughter home for a ‘meet the family’ dinner. Carmilla’s brother, Will, had begged out due to a football something-or-other and left her to fend for herself. Nothing she had said or offered had moved her mother to set her free.

Carmilla had fully expected to hate Mr.Hollis and his daughter, Laura. She wasn’t wholly disappointed. They were both much too cheery and optimistic. The dad seemed overly proud and protective with a laugh at least ten decibels too boisterous. His jokes were of the awful dad variety. The daughter was cute enough if you were into the preppy type and full of rainbows, sunshine, and glitter. Carmilla was not.

Laura had more of a backbone than was obvious, however. Carmilla had to give her that. As soon as she saw an opportunity, even before dessert was ready, Laura Hollis pounced on Carmilla’s mother’s politics. The younger Karnstein sibling had long theorized their mother might be dirty, but Laura had come prepared. Had Camilla been paying a bit more attention, she may have noticed the pencil tucked behind one ear and the flip notebook in a back pocket.

It took work not to laugh at the look on her Maman’s face or the way redness had begun to creep up Sherman Hollis’ neck and up to the tips of his ears.

“Shop talk is not polite at the table, dear. I have done my best to teach my children so over the years. Do you not agree, Sherman?” Maman asked with a sickly sweet smile when the little journalist had to stop to breathe.

“Oh, that is rich, Maman. We haven’t even seen this table in at least a year and a half. Everything I have learned has been from a private tutor you hired to get me into your stupid college.” Carmilla scoffed. She stood and began to clear her plates from the table, ever the gentle-lady. “Feel free to put that on the record, Cupcake. We can continue this conversation elsewhere. I find you to be delightfully savage.”

Carmilla deposited the tableware in the sink and retrieved a bottle of Jack Daniels from the cupboard where her mother thought it was hidden and two tumblers before leading the other girl away.

“You backed me up in there, why?” Laura asked, rolling the glass in her hands.

“Don’t beat around the bush, do you, Pumpkin?” Carmilla asked rhetorically in response. “I guess just because you stood up to her and weren’t afraid to ask the hard questions. I have wondered many of those things you asked about myself, but have never had the courage to look her in the eyes and ask, point blank, if she’s corrupt .”

“She’s your mom. It makes sense for you to want to see the good in her.” Laura said softly. She didn’t know this girl well, but it was clear this was not the time for judgment or questions.

“At times I wonder if there is any good left to see.” Carmilla’s voice was barely a whisper. Her black hair fell to hide her face.

“There has to be at least a little… she ended up with a daughter like you, didn’t she?” Laura bumped the other girl’s shoulder with her own. “From what I have seen of you so far, you really aren’t too bad.”

The grin the budding little reporter shot her could start fires, it was so sunny and cheerful. For the first time since they had met, Carmilla didn’t mind.

“You are alright yourself, Lauronica Mars.” Carmilla replied, downing her third glass. “We had best go and check if my mother has eaten your father alive, yet. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

“That does sound quite possible.” Laura replied as she decided then and there to be a part of Carmilla’s world.


End file.
